The Skeleton Key (2005)

Don't waste your time....
This movie was extremely disappointing. First off, it was not scary AT ALL. It never creeped me out or made me jump once. Second of all, it was ABSURD! The ending was ridiculous and the whole plot was ridiculous. Save your 2 hours....

OBVIOUS ending -- and who are all these shill "reviewers"?
I guessed this film's "surprise ending," and all its plot twists, 20 minutes into the film. The clues were so loudly broadcast (all those references to how terrible aging is; how horrible to be around old people), the filmmakers may as well have scrolled their "surprise ending" across the bottom of the screen.

THE SKELETON KEY's "twist ending" is identical to that of THE BLUE MAN (1985, aka ETERNAL EVIL) and ALISON'S BIRTHDAY (1979), with some additional borrowing from the New Orleans set ANGEL HEART (1987).

SPOILER ALERT (Well, not really a spoiler, as I'd already guessed all of this 20 minutes into the film, as will all other hardcore horror fans): A young nurse is hired by an old woman to take care of her old husband. The old husband appears frightened. I guessed right off that the old woman planned to exchange bodies with the young nurse, and that the old husband had already exchanged bodies with the young lawyer.

All my previously mentioned films also had body/soul transference plots, as did many 1970s horror TV shows.

SKELETON KEY is not exactly THE SIXTH SENSE.

SKELETON KEY is also an arbitrary, pointless title. Yes, there's a skeleton key in the film, but it's not really integral to the core plot.

I also can't believe that this marginal, mostly unknown film has already racked up some 200 reviews, most of them glowing. The film's interns and production assistants must have worked overtime uploading shill reviews.

SKELETON KEY is a highly unoriginal piece of tripe. Not scary, just obvious and tedious and dull.

Intelligent, unusual thriller
This is an intelligent and unusual supernatural thriller. Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta (there is an excellent use of its locations), it stars Kate Hudson as a caregiver who is given the job of nursing the invalid husband (John Hurt, who, playing a recent stroke victim, doesn't speak a word in the whole film) of Gena Rowlands, who live in a creepy old house in an old plantation. Soon it becomes clear that the Hurt character knows something terrible that he is unable to say. This is only the beginning of a very creepy, unsettling thriller. There is a very intelligent final twist, that holds up on second viewing (many viewers, I suspect, will not get the twist on first viewing). I don't remember seeing such twist in a movie before, but in its supernatural implications (in the possibility it holds in someone switching bodies), it is reminiscent of a nifty H. G. Wells story, the Story of the Late Mr. Evelsham.