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Skeleton Key, TheMike ClarkWho would have guessed that the summer's most invincible villain would be a sweet little old lady who graciously serves tea and makes a mean gumbo? If it's hard to imagine a tough-as-nails adversary in the form of a matronly septuagenarian in an apron, then it's unlikely you'll buy the rest of The Skeleton Key. This born-on-the-bayou thriller stars Gena Rowlands as the unbeatable foe and Kate Hudson as a hospice worker caring for Rowlands' dying husband (John Hurt). The setting is alluring: a ramshackle, 30-room plantation house set amid swampland and mossy willows. The stately manse has seen better days and played host to several mysterious inhabitants. This is essentially a haunted-house horror flick that starts off with effectively eerie scenes but devolves into a forced and mildly ridiculous ghost story. Hurt, as a stroke victim left paralyzed and mute, communicates powerfully with a hooded, terrified gaze. Rowlands is generally convincing as the Southern gentlewoman with a steely core, although she is given some clich??d dialogue to deliver, as is most of the cast. Raised by her father, who died suddenly while they were estranged, Hudson's character is determined to comfort the mortally ill. She goes to work at the forbidding mansion and soon finds herself investigating a sinister attic where things go bump in the night. Peter Sarsgaard plays the elderly couple's lawyer with an excessively mannered Southern accent that doesn't jibe with his expressionless demeanor. Director Iain Softley employs intriguing camera angles to heighten some of the suspense. It's too bad the movie goes over the top and falls apart in the last third. With its claustrophobic atmosphere, The Skeleton Key has some things in common with a much better film, Alejandro Amen??bar's creepy The Others. But audiences may feel they've seen this story on an episode of some old TV drama or read something like it in Nancy Drew and the Moss-Covered Mansion. Unlike the astute fictional sleuth, Hudson's character is not all that perceptive. We figure out pretty much from the start who the bad guys are, while she remains trusting. It's common to see youthful, hard-bodied stars withstand heaps of abuse, often with nary a scratch or perhaps just a tiny cut that serves only to offset their striking features. It's sort of refreshing to see a tough character look like someone's grandma. But she does generate some inadvertent laughs. After plummeting spectacularly down a staircase, she dusts herself off and says politely to Hudson: "Well, child, I believe you broke my legs." If believable thrills and chills are what you're after, The Skeleton Key provides only the bare bones.
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