Young nurse Caroline (Kate Hudson), disgusted with the systems of "management" by the hospital in which she works, decides to move--at the suggestion of a friend--to support Ben (John Hurt), a terminally ill patient, in an old and huge residence, located in Louisiana, near a plantation. Qua is particularly struck by the vague and ambiguous attitude of Ben's wife as, in various contexts, she makes strange allusions to the house's past...
Caroline, using a pass key, begins to explore the various rooms until she comes upon a door (in the attic) that appears to have been locked for years.
Impressed by the fact that Ben was seized by a stroke just as she was in the attic, she forces her way in: inside she finds strange objects, books, and records that seem connected to anomalous rituals. In particular, on one vinyl record is engraved an impressive chorus of voices that seems connected to a mysterious black person executed, many years earlier, by a group of wealthy racists linked to the exploitation of "blacks" in the plantation fields....
The Skeleton Key is an atmospheric film that aims to tickle the viewer's curiosity by bringing to the screen a story that starts with a rational and verisimilar incipt and closes in a delirious and caustic finale.
It is not true, until you believe us is the philosophy of the film: and that is, in essence, what happens to the young Caroline, played by a very good Kate Hudson, who, despite having a rational education, ends up falling victim to her worst nightmares...
The technical realization of the film is almost perfect, thanks to the good budget enjoyed by the whole operation.
If there is a momentary lapse, it can be found in the peculiar slowness of the story, which then abruptly veers into an apocalyptic ending (certainly contrary to the "happy ending"): moving from a -reading- "suggested and implied" level to a -visual- level of "exhibited and forced" combat by "magic."
Screenplay by Ehren Kruger, formerly the originator of the Western-style script for The Ring.
Review by Undying1
