If Rob Reiner’s Misery where to have a one-night stand with Iain Softley’s The Wings of a Dove, the coupling would more than likely produce the latter’s own The Skeleton Key. The British director’s gothic thriller is a meditation upon observer expectation and bias with Hoodoo as its ruse. Kate Hudson’s performance rises above many [insert mundane career here]-cum-detective roles in the genre as the film closes on a highly fascinating, postmodern note of bitter honesty.
As a subconscious effort to atone for permitting her father to die alone while she was managing a band on tour, twenty-five year-old hospice worker Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) resigns from her current position in a hospital after the staff displays nothing but apathy to her recently deceased patient as they hastily dispose of the corpse in order to free the room for another paying individual. She is then solicited by Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), the family attorney of the Devereaux family in Terrebone Parish, Louisiana, to care for Ben (John Hurt), who has recently suffered a stroke. Shortly after being introduced into the household by Ben’s wife, Violet (Gena Rowlands), Caroline begins to suspect that something is amiss due to Violet’s insistence upon not having mirrors within the house and a futile attempt by Ben to escape the residence. Caroline is then confronted with the house’s dark past atop the Hoodoo practices within the region.
As far as any more of the plot is concerned, The Skeleton Key is yet another thriller which denies the critic of his or her role in that I cannot explore the film in as much detail as I would most others without deferring to distracting ambiguities because Softley’s film builds upon itself as it leads to a revelatory climax. Any misstep on my behalf might give away or insinuate what’s to come for the tabula rasa viewer and, as such, I am unwilling to run the risk of ruining the filmmaker’s almost excruciatingly patient (his work with Henry James’s The Wings of a Dove paid off) effort before succumbing to a very postmodern, highly rewarding plot twist. However, I will state this: As surprisingly simple as the plot is for a modern thriller (most become overly convoluted this day and age), Softley ingeniously sets the viewer up–not with an explicit red herring–but one which is implied, leading his audience to the false assurance that they have it figured out when, bam, the work falls together perfectly. As such, one isn’t left feeling intellectually inept, but rather amazed at how well crafted The Skeleton Key actually is.
As far as the aforementioned ambiguities are concerned, the work echoes one of the main motifs of the director’s K-PAX as we examine how observer bias, insinuation, and expectation changes one’s perception (thus making the red herring intertextually relevant). Arguably trite, our guide is Caroline, a nurse–thus a skeptic due to her background in medicine–who is confronted with what she deems to be her philosophic antipode: superstitious nonsense, that is, the practice and authenticity of Hoodoo. But, as promised, I will not address how well the character contends with her conflicting scenario but will merely leave with the admiration which I hold for Hudson as she convincingly conveys Caroline’s mindset throughout.
The only complaints I have with the film is that when you set a film in the swamps of New Orleans, the viewer expects the region to become a character in and of itself. Granted, this is unfair in that–as Freud might say–sometimes a locale is just a locale, but considering the influence the environment has upon the narrative, Softley’s scenic deprivation becomes a culpable crime. In short, he could have taken a few hints from Alan Parker’s Angel Heart in this respect. However, I will staunchly posit the faux pas of two instances of false alarms which, given the director, he should have known better for they are merely gratuitous and, even after much personal argumentation, I cannot acknowledge the possibility that such were implemented for any other reason than this.
Understandably, Iain Softley’s The Skeleton key doesn’t hold a light to Robert Aldrich’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte as far as gothic southern thrillers go. However, the story is masterfully handled in that the director never becomes antsy (he shouldn’t considering he takes almost an average of three years to make a feature), permitting his narrative to patiently unfold as he studies how the human mind can be socially molded before pulling the curtain back to reveal what we should have seen all along but, much like Caroline, were too caught up in the trees to stop to and realize that a forest was engulfing us the entire time.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
