After spending the last few weeks on J.A. Bayona’s ghost story The Orphanage (listen), Jack Nicholson’s commanding performance in George Miller’s The Witches of Eastwick (listen), and a timely discussion of James Whale’s Frankenstein (listen), we needed some mid-aughts comfort food.
Enter Iain Softley’s 2005 film The Skeleton Key, a Southern Gothic tale about Caroline (Kate Hudson), an impressionable young hospice aide who takes a job at a remote plantation against the advice of her roommate, Jill (Joy Bryant).
Tensions abound between Caroline and the matriarch of the house, Violet (Gena Rowlands), who has very particular demands about how to treat her husband Ben (John Hurt). The rules extend to the house itself, which is bereft of mirrors and has a single locked door in the attic that Caroline’s titular skeleton key won’t open.
Clearly, there’s something more going on, and as Caroline investigates, she becomes more immersed in hoodoo, a practice she barely understands. With the support of the Devereaux’s estate lawyer, Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), Caroline will stop at nothing to ensure Ben’s safety, even if it increasingly means she’s putting her own future in jeopardy.
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Episode 360: The Skeleton Key (2005)
Lay down a line of protective brick dust and scream “I don’t believe!” because we are discussing Iain Softley’s 2005 Southern Gothic thriller, The Skeleton Key.
Starring Kate Hudson and Gena Rowlands, this Ehren Kruger joint has a great twist (or is it a reveal?) that may or may not have dicey racial implications.
Plus: not trusting Peter Sarsgaard, Black character exposition, the difference between hoodoo and voodoo, and the ending we still can’t believe a studio signed off on!
Cross out The Skeleton Key!
Coming Up Next: We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of arguably the most controversial film we’ve ever tackled on the pod: Pier Passolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 437 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead, Hulu’s remake of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, new Oz Perkins joint Keeper, Predator: Badlands and, to celebrate American Thanksgiving, an audio commentary on the 1987 cult classic Blood Rage!