Caroline works in the care of disabled and elderly people in a hospital in New Orleans. But tired and discouraged by the insensitivity and coldness with which patient deaths are handled in the hospital, reduced to simple bureaucratic procedures, she decides to look for work elsewhere. So, following an advertisement in a newspaper, she moves into a large house in the rural area of New Orleans to take care of Ben, an old man who has become paralyzed after a stroke. But from the very beginning, Caroline encounters the hostility of Violet, Ben's wife, who greets her coldly and gives her the "skeleton key" a master key that opens all the doors in the house except one, a small attic room that Violet says she has never entered since she has lived there. Caroline, convinced that there is something strange about Ben's sudden paralysis connected in some way to the attic (the place where the man was struck by the stroke), successfully tries to open the closed door and here finds objects testifying to hoodoo practices. From that moment on, the girl's life will be upset by a series of events bordering on the paranormal.
In a pre-autumn cinematic period full of science fiction blockbusters, one cannot ask for better than an intriguing and unsettling story of hoodoo (a magical practice characteristic of the voodoo religion) and human sacrifices, crafted impeccably both technically and artistically.
"The Skeleton Key" addresses a topic, black magic and voodoo, little exploited by horror cinema (but the few times it has been addressed it has succeeded in creating high-quality films like "Angel Heart" and "The Serpent and the Rainbow"). In this case, the magical theme is analyzed from the point of view of popular superstition, almost with an anthropological touch, which highlights, with an initially skeptical eye, the way of attributing individual misfortunes to curses and cures to purification rituals. Thus, among brick dust to prevent evil from passing, spells based on dried herbs and crow feathers, and old vinyl records with recordings of unsettling rituals, the young protagonist (played by a Kate Hudson perfectly cast in the role) makes a transition, both physical and spiritual, from a state of absolute skepticism to a complete certainty of the existence of the supernatural: and it is precisely this progressive initiation into believing in the incredible that will condemn her to a state of increasing terror. In fact, the film's tagline reads prophetically "When you start to believe, the fear begins," so much so that, by the opposite axiom, not believing makes you immune to magic, and therefore in this case to fear.
Although the film is based on an original story, it is not exempt from horror clichés post "The Sixth Sense"; inevitable will be sudden appearances, sound jumps, creaks, and doors that close on their own, all characteristics brought back into vogue by Shyamalan but belonging to the classic tradition of haunted house films. In fact, one of the protagonists of this work is the great colonial house lost in the bayou where most of the story takes place: a location with a Gothic and very suggestive flavor, enhanced by a rarefied and dreamlike photography that cannot but involve the spectator in an even more marked way.
The direction of Iain Oftley (K-Pax) is inspired and sure, and the screenplay by Ehren Kruger (the now more famous Hollywood horror film screenwriter, his are the scripts of "Scream 3," "The Ring," "The Ring Two") is also interesting and well structured, strong above all of an unexpected ending. Among the actors, in addition to the already mentioned Kate Hudson, who makes her debut in the thriller/horror genre after a long apprenticeship in romantic comedies, two excellent veterans like John Hurt and Gena Rowlands stand out, respectively in the roles of the spouses Ben and Violet.
In conclusion, "The Skeleton Key" is a fascinating and original supernatural thriller that, despite the clichés, manages to keep the viewer's attention thanks to a well-structured story and a subtle sense of unease that pervades the entire film.
It definitely deserves half a vote more.
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