As I’m sure you wonderful gore-hounds know by now, we love every weird and wonderful sub genre the twisted world of horror has thrown our way over the years. Sit this particular horror fan down to watch the latest splatterfest, zombie massacre, creature feature or slasher flick, to name but a few, and I’d be happy as a pig in shit. Happier in fact. Folk horror and witchcraft is one subgenre that I’ve grown to increasingly appreciate over the years, and most recently the work of Robert Eggers, for example, has had me enthralled. It was his 2015 folk horror, The Witch, that first introduced me to his nuanced, macabre yet beautifully crafted movies, and everything he’s produced since has been a must see. The trailer for his take on Nosferatu has just dropped at the time of writing this video and it looks immense. However, with the world of folk horror very much at the forefront of my horror binging recently, I figured what better time to take a look back on a movie that has its roots in witchcraft and folklore, 2005’s The Skeleton Key, starring the very, not almost, famous Kate Hudson, and Peter Sarsgaard. It’s crazy to think that the movie is almost twenty five years old, and from what I remember when I first caught it as a young whipper-snapper, it wasn’t great. But… I was probably too busy rocking out to Metallica and Slayer to fully appreciate some of the movies we’d either catch as a family, or that my friends and I would watch through beer soaked late adolescent eyes, to fully appreciate it. It also received very mixed reviews from what I recall, but time can often be kind to movies such as this one, so let’s find out if it’s an effective horror movie after all, here on WTF happened to The Skeleton Key.
I guess the best place to start before we dive into the movie itself is to establish the difference between voodoo and hoodoo, as the movie’s plot centers mainly on the former, yet there’s often confusion over what the differences actually are. Voodoo, which is also spelled Vodou, Voudou, and Voudon, is an actual religion that is commonly thought to have originated in Haiti, and has roots in West African spiritual traditions. It also has a set of spirits and deities that are worshipped. Hoodoo, on the other hand, differs in that although it doesn’t have any specific deities you must follow, there is still a belief in spirits and life-giving energies. There’s also no organized hierarchy and it doesn’t have the structures generally associated with the more religious voodoo. There have been many weird and wonderful horror movies with voodoo at the forefront of the narrative; The Serpent and the Rainbow and it’s nasty genital mutilation, the once x-rated Angel Heart, classics such as White Zombie from 1932 and yes, even Disney went full voodoo with The Princess and the Frog. All great examples of witchcraft in Hollywood, but it was The Skeleton Key that really embraced the hoodoo side of spiritual practices.
Before we dive into the merits of the movie though, just how exactly did it come about in the first place, and who are the key players involved in its production? The script was written by Ehren Kruger, an American screenwriter and producer who’s probably best known for writing three of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the awesome Top Gun: Maverick and he already had some horror credentials with The Ring and The Ring Two, plus Scream 3 and uncredited rewrites on Scream 4 when Kevin Williamson had to leave the production. On directing duties was English filmmaker Iain Softley whose movies include Backbeat, Hackers, The Wings of the Dove, K-PAX, Inkheart and the BBC adaptation of The Outcast.
As we know, the main protagonists in the movie were played by Kate Hudson and Peter Sarsgaard, who at the time were not necessarily actors who you would associate with the horror genre. The excellent Cameron Crowe coming-of-age drama Almost Famous catapulted Hudson’s stardom, and before she took on hoodoo in The Skeleton Key her most prominent roles were in The Four Feathers, The Divorce and Raising Helen. Peter Sarsgaard is probably best known for his many superb character actor roles, plus some villainous turns also. He first came to prominence in Dead Man Walking which was followed by more substantial roles in The Man in the Iron Mask and Boys Don’t Cry. His career was very much on the ascendency by the time The Skeleton Key was offered to him and like Hudson, it was a great opportunity for him to stretch his acting muscles in a more horror-centric role. The rest of the cast includes the legendary, and sadly late, John Hurt plus roles for Joy Bryant, Gene Rowlands and Jeryl Prescott, to name just a few of the key players.
Almost twenty five years on then, how does the movie hold up and was it well received upon release? Well, I’ll dive into the critical reception of the movie a little later, but from a personal viewpoint, I had a fairly decent time with The Skeleton Key. Mostly. There’s several moments in the film where some of the characters explain that hoodoo only works if you believe in it, and to be fair, the same can be said of the film itself. This kind of horror movie only works if you’re able to suspend your disbelief and buy into the fact that in the real world, hoodoo is able to conjure up all kinds of bad mojo, ghosts and other mildly scary things that go bump in the night. Also, while the script goes to certain lengths to explain that hoodoo is, in fact, quite different to voodoo, what we get doesn’t look quite so different from other black magic thrillers that have preceded this movie. One scene even includes a nightmare where one of the characters resembles a traditional looking voodoo doll. The themes of the occult and the imagery we see are all fairly convincing but don’t add much to the bog standard house with a dark past trope we’ve seen countless times before.
The plot centers on Hudson’s nurse Caroline Ellis, who quits her job to look after John Hurt’s stroke victim Ben Deveraux. Shortly after meeting Ben’s creepy and very suspicious wife, Violet, Caroline discovers a room in the attic full of spells, hair and bones used to practice hoodoo. Violet has warned her about entering the secret room and soon it becomes apparent that Ben may have been affected by it somehow, and that Caroline will also soon become susceptible to a malevolent force in the house. At one point, on a dark, threatening and stormy night, Ben tries to escape the house through a second-story window. Which, let’s be honest, would normally raise all kinds of alarm bells for everyone involved, but remember gore-hounds, we’re suspending our disbelief with these voodoo hoodoo shenanigans. Instead of seeking outside help, Caroline vows to help Ben, mainly due to her own regrets involving her own father’s death.
One thing The Skeleton Key has going for it, is the production design which makes for an atmospheric trip into the ominous and very dark history lurking in the house. There’s a nice amount of attention to detail, and director Softley has obviously done his spooky house homework. However, despite an effective build up of tension, the movie falls into some of the most obvious and overused tropes of the genre; we have the mysterious elderly woman who knows all about the black magic in the attic, boo scares aplenty with characters suddenly appearing in the frame, plus those cheap and ineffective very loud bursts of music at key moments. That shit isn’t scary. It’s lazy writing!
The cast do a good job of bringing the spooky shenanigans to life and while Hudson is a terrific actress, she doesn’t have too much to work with here. Also, while Sarsgaard is as dependable as ever, it’s a shame his other key male co-star, William Hurt, is left with a largely thankless role that seems to be a waste of the late actor’s huge talents. Like I said towards the beginning of this retrospective, I did have fun with the movie but it’s definitely a missed opportunity and should be filed under the category of ‘watch it if it pops up on your streaming service when you’re bored on a Monday night’. It has some decent production values and there’s a nice twist towards the end which, if you’re a clever clogs, you’ll probably spot early on, but overall this one is too tame to satiate this gore-hound.
The Skeleton Key was released in the U.S. on August 12th, 2005, which was a couple of weeks after those lucky folk in the UK, where it opened on July 29th. It made $16.1 million over its opening weekend domestically and went on to gross $47.9 million, which eventually equated to a worldwide haul of $92 million worldwide. There wasn’t a great deal of competition for the film at the time with movies such as Four Brothers, The Dukes of Hazard, Wedding Crashers and Deuce Bigalow: European Bigalow in and around the movie in the box-office charts.
Critically the movie was met with a lukewarm response with Roger Ebert writing that, “The Skeleton Key is one of those movies that explains too much while it is explaining too little, and leaves us with a surprise at the end that makes more sense the less we think about it. But the movie’s mastery of technique makes up for a lot.” The Los Angeles Times were more positive, calling it, “tightly plotted and suspenseful enough to keep you guessing until the satisfying, unexpected end, which is worth suspending disbelief for”. However, The New York Times were less enthused, describing the film as “enjoyably inane”.
Which, I guess is more or less where I stand on the movie and although it’s arguably a waste of the talent involved, I did have some fun with it. But perhaps not for the reasons the filmmakers intended. However, the most important opinion we always love to hear is from YOU guys, so what’s your take on The Skeleton Key? Am I being too harsh on its lazy writing and cheap boo scares, or did the filmmakers craft a thriller with enough tension to merit its hoodoo inspired mythology? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see you wonderful gore-hounds next time. Thanks for watching!
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