The Skeleton Key is a 2005 American supernatural folk horror film directed by Iain Softley and starring Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, and Joy Bryant. The screenplay by Ehren Kruger follows a New Orleans hospice nurse who begins a job at a Terrebonne Parish plantation home, and becomes entangled in a mystery involving the house, its former inhabitants, and Hoodoo rituals that took place there.
Plot[]
Caroline Ellis, a hospice aide, quits her position at a nursing home and is hired as the caretaker of an isolated plantation house in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. The aging matron of the house, Violet Devereaux, needs help looking after her husband Benjamin, who was mostly paralyzed by an apparent stroke. At the insistence of the family's estate lawyer, Luke Marshall, Caroline accepts the position.
After Ben attempts to escape his room during a storm, Caroline investigates the house's attic, where Violet said Ben suffered his stroke; she uses a skeleton key which Violet gave her. She discovers a secret room filled with ritual paraphernalia. Caroline confronts Violet, who reveals that the room used to belong to two African American servants who were employed at the house by the Thorpe family 90 years prior. The servants, Mama Cecile and Papa Justify, were renowned hoodoo practitioners who were lynched after conducting a ritual with the Thorpes' two children, from whom Violet and Ben later bought the house. Violet tells Caroline that they keep no mirrors in the house because they see reflections of Cecile and Justify in them. Caroline later discovers a phonograph record from the attic: Conjure of Sacrifice, a recording of Papa Justify reciting a hoodoo ritual.
Caroline surmises that Ben's stroke was caused by hoodoo, but believes that his paralytic state is a nocebo effect induced by his own belief, rather than something supernatural. Taking advice from her friend Jill, Caroline visits a hidden hoodoo shop in a nearby laundromat, where a hoodoo woman gives her tools and instructions to cure Ben. After she conducts the ritual, Ben regains some ability to move and speak and he begs Caroline to get him away from Violet.
Caroline tells Luke she is suspicious of Violet, but he remains skeptical. They travel to a gas station that Caroline previously noted was lined with brick dust, which she was told is a hoodoo defense; supposedly, no one who means one harm can pass a line of brick dust. She asks one of the proprietors, a blind woman, about the Conjure of Sacrifice, which she learns is a spell wherein the caster steals the remaining years of life from the victim. Increasingly convinced of hoodoo's authenticity, Caroline fears that Violet will soon cast the spell on Ben.
Caroline discovers that Violet is unable to pass a line of brick dust laid across one of the house's doorways, confirming her suspicions. She incapacitates Violet and attempts to escape the house with Ben, but the front gate is chained shut. Caroline hides Ben on the property and travels to Luke's office for help. Luke, revealed to be Violet's accomplice, brings Caroline back to the house. Caroline escapes, gets into a fight with Violet, and violently pushes her down the stairs, breaking her legs. With strategic use of brick dust, Caroline flees to the attic, calls 9-1-1 and Jill for help, and casts what she believes is a protective spell. Violet, having caught up with her, reveals Caroline has inadvertently trapped herself inside a protective circle. Luke plays the Conjure of Sacrifice, as Violet pushes a full-length mirror at Caroline, which reflects the original owner's daughter, then Violet, and lastly Mama Cecile. When the mirror collides with Caroline, her soul switches bodies with Violet's.
Violet—revealed to be in fact Mama Cecile, who had been occupying Violet's body through the Conjure—wakes up in Caroline's body, and force-feeds Caroline (now in Violet's body) a potion that induces a stroke-like paralytic state like Ben's. Luke (actually Papa Justify) arrives upstairs, revealing that Mama Cecile and Papa Justify have been conducting the Conjure of Sacrifice on new people since their supposed deaths; they had swapped bodies with the two Thorpe children just before the lynching. Because hoodoo is only effective on those who believe in it, Cecile and Justify had to wait for Caroline to come to believe through her own investigation.
Emergency services arrive the next morning and take Caroline and Ben away, trapped in their paralyzed dying bodies; when Jill arrives, "Luke" tells her that the Devereauxes left their estate to Caroline, ensuring that Cecile and Justify will continue to occupy the house.
Cast[]
- Kate Hudson as Caroline Ellis
- Gena Rowlands as Violet Devereaux
- John Hurt as Benjamin "Ben" Devereaux
- Peter Sarsgaard as Luke Marshall
- Joy Bryant as Jill Dupay
- Jeryl Prescott as Mama Cecile
- Ronald McCall as Papa Justify
- Thomas Uskali as Robertson Thorpe
- Jen Apgar as Madeleine Thorpe
- Forrest Landis is Martin Thorpe
- Jamie Lee Redmon as Grace Thorpe