The Skeleton Key

‘Hocus Pocus’, if we’re not in the mysterious world of the Louisiana swamps where shady characters are into witchcraft, voodoo and curses. Into this tensely horrific world comes pretty Kate Hudson playing a young hospice carer Caroline who takes a job offered by odd lawyer Peter Sarsgaard to look after old man Ben (John Hurt) a stroke victim who is married to the sternly dismissive Violet (Gena Rowlands). The pay’s going to be better on the new job for a start.

Naturally Ben and Violet live in one of those traditionally stand-alone gothic houses where stairs betray noises and doors have an eerie creak. For Caroline, this sure beats working in the hospice. But that’s not all of course .. before you can ‘look out Kate !’, you find she’s had enough of walking around with very little on, and instead is taking an unnatural interest in the mysterious goings-on in the attic. Now if only there was a mirror around in which to fix one’s hair .. and just where did they put a key to open the attic door …. ?

To some The Skeleton Key will be the kind of horror that falls into the realms of ‘been there’ and ‘got the T-shirt’, since its formulaic, and the secrets revealed fall into the world of hokum and voodoo and later seem faintly ludicrous. A reasonable cast make the most of what is on offer and the film itself comes into a summer of scares, with The Descent and Dark Water already out there, so The Skeleton’s what-not faces stern competition in the marketplace and I suspect it may not pick up every horror punter going.

Matt Arnoldi