Bland Skeleton Key Locks Out Thrills
Belief is a funny thing. It can make people do extraordinary feats beyond any real human understanding. I remember, as a child, getting into a heinous car accident. My uncle was driving, I was in the backseat and my younger cousin was sitting next to me. Long story short, our car was basically pulverized; my cousin and I trapped crying within the backseat. All I really remember about all of this is my uncle opening the back door and lifting the two of us out, sweeping us over to safety on the other side of the street.
Why is any of this actually interesting? Well, according to everyone who was there (my parents and another uncle were following in a different car), when the paramedics and firemen arrived they were flabbergasted to find either of the rear doors open, let alone one of them nearly falling off its hinges. Everything was smashed beyond recognition, crushed so far past opening with physical means doing so bordered on the impossible. So when the firemen asked my uncle how he opened it he only had one response. “I believed I could do it, so I did. I had kids in there.”
Now, I don’t know if my uncle really lifted that door off its hinges or not, but everyone in my family certainly believes he did. No matter what he does for the rest of his life, no matter what silly idiotic mistakes he makes (and, like all of us, he’s made plenty), my uncle will forever be known as the guy who removed a car door with his bare hands to save the children. Not a bad thing to be remembered for, no?
Belief of a different sort plays a major roll in the new suspense-thriller “The Skeleton Key.” Practical and strong-willed hospice worker Catherine Ellis (Kate Hudson. “Raising Helen”) doesn’t have time for New Orleans southern-style mystic religions. Things like voodoo and witchcraft about as appealing to her as having to toss out her patients’ former lives with the morning trash, and as far as she is concerned they’re not worth giving a second thought.
That changes when she meets the masters of an old sprawling estate smack-dab in the middle of the bayou wilds of Terrebone Parrish, Violet (Gena Rowlands, “The Notebook”) and Ben (John Hurt, “Hellboy”) Deveraux. Ben’s just had a massive stroke leaving him virtually paralyzed and completely mute. At the urging of her lawyer Luke Marshall (the wonderfully talented Peter Sarsgaard, “Shattered Glass”) Violet hires Catherine to look after her dying husband, warning the young man that, “She’s not going to understand the house.” Soon, the young woman with rational ideas of life and death comes to think there is more going on than a simple stroke, the Deveraux’s belief in Cajun magics the key to discovering why Ben is trapped within his own flesh. But belief can be dangerous, and the more Caroline digs the more she, too, comes to believe the house’s evil mysticisms might indeed be all-to real. Ignoring Violet’s warnings, the nurse looks to understand the estate in every which way and in doing so starts down a path that could lead to her undoing.
For my part, I wanted to believe that Ian Softley’s (“The Wings of the Dove”) new work was a good movie. It has a delicately fragile and unsettlingly unbalanced central performance by Hudson (easily her best work since “Almost Famous”) and a wickedly sinister supporting turn (recalling Ruth Gordon) from the always reliable Rowlands. Sarsgaard oozes menacing charm, while Joy Bryant (“Honey”) adds sublimely practical levity to her role as Caroline’s by-the-book best friend Jill. The film is elegantly photographed by Paul Mindel (“Spy Game”) and Edward Shearmur’s (“The Bad News Bears”) Cajun-influenced score evokes the properly disconcerting atmosphere. So, like I said, I wanted to believe “The Skeleton Key” was a good movie, wanted to believe it more than I probably should admit. But it isn’t a good movie, and no amount of wanting to believe otherwise is ever going to change that small, simple fact.
Blame screenwriter Ehren Kruger (“Arlington Road”). I can’t tell if this hit-and-miss scribe is a remarkably talented guy who’s unfortunately had a few misfires or if his few good scripts were just the result of a large amount of blind luck. Unfortunately, this is the second of three disasters just this year for Kruger, and while this one is nowhere near as insipid as his script for “Ring Two” or as bizarrely awful as treatment for Terry Gilliam’s forthcoming “The Brothers Grimm,” it’s still nothing to crow about. Cribbing liberally from “Rosemary’s Baby,” “”Don’t Look Back,” “The Omen” and “Angel Heart,” the screenplay is a mess, a cryptic puzzle box moving so hesitantly through its labyrinthine paces I’m almost positive a blind man walking on stilts could have produced a more steady product.
It didn’t help that I figured out the central ‘twist’ about one-third of the way through. It’s always a particular disappointment when a mystery ends up being singularly obvious and that’s exactly what happens here. Sure Softley uses every trick at his disposal to keep audiences off the scent, but anyone with half an ounce of common sense isn’t going to be fooled. Too bad, because other than an unfortunately silly flashback sequence the director’s work is supremely confident. This is, if nothing else, a supremely good looking film and Softley can at least take some solace there.
In all honesty, had the filmmakers shown some guts and made their climax a bit more cryptic and not so literal I might be singing a far different song. And while Rowlands and Hurt do share a look of understanding heartbreak that can’t help but move it still isn’t remotely enough to get a person to accept much of the silliness that’s come before. It’s funny, but I guess I do believe in one thing every bit as much as my uncle did that fateful afternoon of my childhood, and that’s this: “The Skeleton Key” is a disappointment, locking thrills and chills away from an audience eager to open a door revealing both.
Film Rating: ęę (out of 4)
