The main problem with THE SKELETON KEY has nothing to do with the movie itself. Billing it as one of the scariest horror movies ever brings people into the theater expecting one thing ... although they end of getting something else. THE SKELETON KEY is a very good suspense movie with some supernatural undertones which don't become full blown until the very end. A woman takes on a job as nurse to an old man who suffered a debilitating heart attack at an old Louisiana plantation home - a home where there have been some bad goings-on since a lynching about 80 years before. The woman (Kate Hudson) discovers the secret of the attic room and soon suspects there is something sinister (although not necessarily supernatural) going on in the house and fights to get the old man to safety. There is that undercurrent of the supernatural and voodoo, but to this point the movie plays as a Southern Gothic version of PSYCHO. But then the true secret of what is going on (although I said there are spoilers, I don't want to give it away), what has been planned for Hudson's character, and what really happened in the house all those years ago comes out. My only regret is that the ending is not as chilling as I would have hoped, but the movie is well-crafted, very suspenseful but not full blown horror like the trailers would have you believe. It is definitely worth a couple of hours of your time.
Review of The Skeleton Key
