August 12, 2005

Even though there were only a handful of horror movies that came out in the summer of 2005 I did not bother to see THE SKELETON KEY. And I believe it was a conscious choice. I tended to dislike Kate Hudson in movies and I think I snobbishly assumed her participation meant it was some phony mainstream horror movie for the normies or whatever. Also I think I still (correctly) distrusted screenwriter Ehren Kruger because of SCREAM 3. Being surprised to like THE RING didn’t fully change my opinion of him.

Hudson (between Garry Marshall’s RAISING HELEN and the Russo Brothers’ YOU, ME AND DUPREE) plays Caroline Ellis, who quits her job at a New Orleans nursing home, disappointed with how dehumanizing it is, and takes a private hospice gig looking after a stroke victim in a plantation house in Terrebonne Parish. Friendly lawyer Luke (Peter Sarsgaard, K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER) convinces fussy Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands following THE NOTEBOOK) to hire her to look after her husband Ben (John Hurt not long after HELLBOY), who is bedridden, doesn’t talk and seems terrified all the time.

I could be totally wrong about this, because I have no New Orleans experience, but I find characters like Violet really condescending toward southerners, the way they speak exclusively in old timey words and sayings. Obviously regional and generational differences exist, but I have trouble believing in someone who will, for example, never refer to her husband’s prescriptions by name or use the word “medicine” because she wants to say “his remedies.” It just seems completely phony to me. To be fair, she is also meant to be condescending toward Caroline, who does comment on it at least once. I got a good laugh when Violet’s already getting on Caroline’s nerves and then starts bragging about how great her garden is.

There are some corny jump scares and things that you’d expect. I think the most effective horror element is the build up of mystery – Ben struggling to say “help me” to Caroline, and then actually crawling out onto the roof trying to escape! – without her knowing what the fuck he’s so afraid of. I wonder if Hurt enjoyed the challenge of playing a character like this? He does eventually talk a little but it’s mostly a non-verbal, always scared role. Maybe it was the first step toward playing his gibberish-spouting character in INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

The title refers to the key Violet gives Caroline, saying it opens everything in the house. The reasons it’s significant enough to use for the title are that 1) she gets suspicious when she finds out there is one door in the attic that it doesn’t unlock and 2) skeletons are spooky because bones are what’s inside a dead body. Of course she manages to pick the lock and discovers a bunch of weird occult shit belonging to Papa Justify (Ronald McCall, MUTANT SPECIES) and Mama Cecile (Jeryl Prescott, later in VACANCY 2: THE FIRST CUT), servants who worked and lived in the house 90 years ago. Caroline’s best friend Jill (Joy Bryant, BAADASSSSS!) explains that what she found is “a hoodoo room,” and that hoodoo is not a religion like voodoo, it’s magic, and it can’t harm you if you don’t believe in it (which she says she’s doesn’t, but she still clearly wants nothing to do with it).

I did not find this movie scary or its story more than mildly compelling, but there is some subtextual stuff that I was interested in. Violet keeps talking about the history of the white family that owned the place but is always brushing past the servants, who Caroline first finds out about from a photo left in a frame behind a photo with only the white people. Eventually, in the traditional person-who-knows-finally-reveals-the-full-backstory-they’ve-been-secretive-about scene (think Nancy’s mom telling her about Fred Krueger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET), I realized Violet might be avoiding the topic out of horror movie fear more than the racism I assumed, but it’s ultimately the same result: white people whitewashing past atrocities, vainly trying to deny their resonance through erasure. She fears the hoodoo but definitely understands that Justify and Cecile did nothing wrong and were victims of a vicious hate crime. Her story even goes out of its way to paint the white family as rich assholes who got real drunk at a party and ignored their kids. What sets them off is finding the kids learning about hoodoo from the servants. It’s made explicit that they’re curious, they’re not being indoctrinated, and I like that they’re caught listening to one of Papa Justify’s rituals on a record, an echo through time of parents not wanting their kids listening to That Type of Music.

I’m not saying it’s in the same ballpark, or the same city as the same ballpark, but this reminded me of CANDYMAN even before it occurred to me that it has Black ghosts who come through mirrors. More importantly it’s another movie about a blond white lady who stumbles across a supernatural occurrence that turns out to be tied to a lynching from the racist past, and she has a Black best friend who offers her some insights she wouldn’t necessarily have and brings her to a “bad part of town” that the friend is more afraid of than her (but for superstitious reasons in this case). I think it’s good that telling these types of stories from the white point of view isn’t the default anymore, but I also think there is value in doing it sometimes because those are the people who still need to face this shit.

In the case of CANDYMAN the idea of her being a well-meaning but totally clueless intruder in the projects is the whole point of the story, but that’s not the dynamic we have here. Instead, Caroline is a not-fully-accepted newcomer to a world of white southerners. I guess she’s the younger generation from a more diverse background who makes more progress toward facing the situation as she learns more about what they’re hiding from her and goes out of her way to talk to different people and get more perspectives on it. (Weirdly the great Isaach De Bankole from GHOST DOG appears speaking Creole at a gas station but never is seen again.)

Ultimately the monsters are these two innocent victims from the past, but that makes them (like Candyman) feel a bit like some of the classic movie monsters. They’re to be feared but they’re coming from a sympathetic place. They have a reason to be angry.

I don’t think I ever saw ARLINGTON ROAD, but I believe it started Kruger’s reputation as a twist ending guy. He also did one for REINDEER GAMES and I liked the movie more than the twist, for sure. Here I do like how he ended it – maybe twist isn’t the right word but there are some drastic turns of events that I didn’t see coming and they do add some excitement. Actually I feel confident the ending must be the main reason I’ve heard claims of pretty-goodness about this over the years.

Director Iain Softley started by writing and directing the Stuart Sutcliffe biopic BACKBEAT (1994), then went Hollywood with the ridiculous font of freebased ninetiesness HACKERS (1995). I suppose his most acclaimed was the Henry James adaptation THE WINGS OF THE DOVE (1997) and most mocked was K-PAX (2001), which was followed by this. THE SKELETON KEY was kind of a hit but then he got caught on the post-Harry-Potter young adult fantasy bubble directing INKHEART (2008). So he’s done a couple since then, but none that I’ve heard of enough to consciously avoid like I did this one.

Yeah I guess it turns out I wasn’t missing much, but it doesn’t hurt to know. I’m not ashamed of my new life as a guy who has seen THE SKELETON KEY.