The Skeleton Key is an efficient little bayou magic thriller—perhaps too efficient at times. Hospice nurse Caroline (Kate Hudson) takes a job caring for stroke victim Ben (the criminally underutilized John Hurt). Ben and his wife Violet (Gena Rowlands getting some juicy screen time) live in a big ole plantation house on the edge of the swamp. By Act 2, Caroline can't decide if she wants to be Cherry Ames or Nancy Drew: she's poking around in a funky old attic room and doing things to Ben that scare the bejeebers out of him.

Act 3 has Caroline convinced that Ben is in danger, and here's where things move along a little too quickly. She bangs down the front porch steps with Ben in his wheelchair, whips open the door of her (not New) Volkswagen Beetle¹, and flips Ben into the passenger seat like a poke sack of greens. Those of you with a loved one on wheels know that the process of getting him into a car actually takes longer than the running time of most movies.

At any rate, thwarted in this effort, Caroline finds an old boat and paddles into the mosquito-free, alligator-free swamp. In no time, she's found some sort of a road house and safety. Heck, if the Cornell Ornithology Lab had had her on staff, they would have found Ivory-billed Woodpecker years ago.

¹When a character drives a (not New) Beetle in the movies, you never hear it on the sound track. Always music instead. There's a reason for that.

 posted: 9:25:28 PM