Set amidst the Louisiana bayous, The Skeleton Key finds hospice nurse Caroline (Hudson) taking a job with the Devereaux family in order to care for stroke-victim Ben (Hurt) and alleviate the strain on his wife Violet (Rowlands). But has Ben really suffered from a stroke, or are there more sinister forces at work? Writer Ehren Kruger (Scream 3, The Ring and Ring Two) replaces the more conventional voodoo with the 'American folk magic' of hoodoo in order to give events the semblance of originality, but the story itself is a hackneyed and predictable affair that fails to create a single believable scary moment. Instead we're offered a hodge-podge of horror cliches spiced with some typical Southern Gothic tropes - Spanish moss, lynchings, slack-jawed yokels, stuffed alligators, mist-shrouded swamps. Will cynical modern gal Caroline come to believe in spells and potions before it's too late? As it happens, Hudson's performance suggests that she was under a spell from the off: conceived, presumably, as deadpan, her turn is simply deadening, each word dropping from her mouth like a suicidal stone. Hurt, as the stroke-victim, is reduced to widening his eyes once in a while, and Rowlands can find little in the script to add to the stereotypical y'all-come-back Southern belle.
