The Skeleton Key

The Skeleton Key (2005)

Directed by: Iain Softley
Written by: Ehren Kruger
Starring: Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, Joy Bryant, Ronald McCall, Jeryl Prescott Sales

This nurse goes out to this old house in the swamp ("Welcome to the swamp!" HAHAHAHA. Wow) to look after this old guy what had a stroke and can't really move or talk or any of that stuff. And then there's this key and this attic and all this funky voodoo (well, hoodoo, actually) and these ghosts and stuff.

Descriptive, huh? It kind of feels like a bunch of weird stuff pieced together - it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before, really - but it was okay. It was pretty creepy. Good atmosphere.

And hey, Louisiana is a spooky place. Or it was, anyway. I don't know what it is right now. And actually, despite it's being a bunch of chunks of other things, I didn't see The Twist coming (despite the fact that I'm familiar with that particular Twist. I think it was in some Richard Matheson story or something).

Anyway, I dug the way it looked. That swamp was beautiful, that house was beautiful, I'd sell my shoes to live there.

I didn't think the dialogue was especially well written. It seemed... fake. The actors did a pretty good job with it, though, I guess. I don't like Peter Sarsgaard all that much... (I do like the fact that his name is Sarsgaard. I always think of that episode of SNL I saw him on. Heh heh, pirates).

And isn't Kate Hudson Orlando Bloom's ex girlfriend or something? I seem to remember there was some big news story when they broke up. I can't quite recall. Maybe that was somebody else. I don't know. I have to look that up now. Kate Bosworth. Who the fuck is that?

Off topic. Sorry. Yeah, I liked this movie pretty good. It was like a ghost story plus. And it had some good spooky bits. Shit jumping out at you kind of thing. I didn't think that the characters were particularly realistic. They suffered from that traditional horror movie affliction. You know the one. They wander off by themselves for no apparent reason. I can forgive them that, though.

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