The Skeleton Key

Kate Hudson is tremendously appealing and was terrific in Almost Famous. Since then, she’s been in pretty much nothing but turkeys. She’d better start finding better roles in better movies, or she’s going to vanish.

This isn’t that part, nor that movie. It has its B-movie charms, and most of the drawbacks. I’ll allow a director two or three GASP! moments in a “scary” movie: a cat jumps out, a door slams shut, a hand reaches into the frame and grabs a shoulder, something awful falls out of a closet or pops out of a box. But I counted nine such moments before we were halfway through. These things are dishonest and make me angry. Horror should proceed honestly from the situation, not from cheap tricks and scare chords from the sound track.

There’s a lot of hoo-hah about hoodoo (as opposed to voodoo), and the story more or less hangs together, in its own terms, and I’ll admit the ending surprised me quite a bit, I never expected them to go there … but it’s not really much of a film.