“She wouldn’t understand the house,” Rowland’s Violet audibly protests (I fear too much) to the unctuous lawyer who ushers Caroline there for the job interview. The decaying mansion itself takes on a personality.
Roger Ebert has shrewdly noted that the creepy gas station where nubile hospice nurse Caroline (Kate Hudson) fills up her tank is peopled with requisite Southern Gothic cretins with not so subtle jars of dubious contents littering a ramshackle series of huts, whereas most residents of Louisiana get their gas like the rest of us - at polished chains along the interstate. On the other hand, The Skeleton Key literally (it is the swamps, you know) drips with atmosphere, much of it clichéd and unrealistic. Deals with the devil in sophisticated New York, it turns out, are not that different, when you get down to it, than these Hoodoo machinations in the bayous of Cajun country, although the brilliance of Rosemary’s Baby is that there everything seems so ordinary and prosaic, down to coven clan neighbor Gordon’s fretting about the marks Mia Farrow’s knife leave in her gleaming wood floors. Still more similarities between the two films emerge. (Ironically, the role of Rosemary’s husband was played by Rowland’s late husband, the redoubtable John Cassavetes in that 1968 classic.) I view her understated performance more in line with Ruth Gordan’s Oscar winning role of amiably evil neighbor in Rosemary’s Baby. With sighs of admiration or regretful contempt, depending on the critic, Rowlands has been compared to both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in their swan song gothic roles. They both give credible performances, Hurt outshining Rowlands even though he hardly has a line, since his character is paralyzed by a stroke and reduced to writing messages on his bed linens, grasping his nurse’s wrist with pleading eyes, and generally looking mysteriously mournful. Two fine veteran actors grace the swamp saga, Gena Rowlands (Violet) and John Hurt (Ben), a onetime member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and best known stateside for his title role in The Elephant Man. Why do we already know that Caroline will be determined to get in there? And what she finds will repel but not deter her from ferreting out its secrets? The old house literally broadcasts its not very original evil omens to the audience – a chairs rocks all by itself on the breezeless, dilapidated front porch, faded wallpaper tells where each and every mirror has been removed, and most of all, the skeleton key that is supposed to unlock every room, will not open the hidden room in the attic. The Skeleton Key tells the tale of Caroline, (Kate Hudson) an idealistic young nurse who stumbles upon more than she expects when she takes on the hospice care of a stroke victim at the run down estate he shares with his wife of many years. Anyway you look at it, not something you would find anywhere near the recommended food pyramid.
Or given the atmospheric locale, perhaps the more proper food analogy would be cracklin’s, a Louisiana inspired junk food, consisting of fried pieces of pork skin with attached underlying fat. You enjoy each decadent mouthful, but in the end you feel bloated and empty at the same time. The Skeleton Key is akin to a McDonald’s double cheeseburger with a shake and fries. "Superstition is the religion of feeble minds." Edmund Burke