Skeleton Key --thoughts after seeing it
 

Hey all,

The movie was OK until

I also felt that the

Also, I felt that the hip hop music was really out of place given the over all 'older' feel of the movie....

Any other thoughts from anyone? Sorry, i don't want to get too crazy with spoilers, but i don't want to be too generic either -- so i'll stop here...




Later,

Matt

Normally you should only use the spoiler tags over actual spoilers and not just half of your sentences.

Can you tell us how the movie ends in spoiler tags? I don't think this movie is worth paying money to see at the moment.

This isn't a a re-make of a Japanese horror flick veiled as something else is it?

I am tired of supernatural thrillers with the premise of:

-A place appears haunted
-A creepy kid shows up making strange faces
-Turns out the creepy kid and other ghosts were wronged in the past, and must haunt to obtain vengeance
-The heroine rights the wrong and the curse is lifted, until the last minute of film where the ghosts comeback!!!

or
-Everyone was a ghost the whole time and they have been stuck in limbo for the whole movie.

I haven't seen it. But that's what I see coming.

Reminds me of Angel Heart. I like the deep-south voodoo (is that the right term?) aspect.

Looks fun. And I really really liked the trailer.

Ian Softley hasn't really had a good movie yet. They're all sort of 'blah'.

Will probably catch in theaters.

I really, really, really liked this movie. It's not perfect, it's not a classic, but it held my interest for the entire flick and I was entertained by it, not really being able to figure out anything that was going on (unlike the recent piles of crap that have been released, like The Ring 2, The Grudge, and on and on).

This will be a love/hate film, and I just happened to really enjoy it.



The first part of the film is somewhat slow moving, but that's what really pulled me in. It was slow moving, but not boring. As each minute passed, I was actually looking forward to see what would happen next.

I hated the rap music in the film, but loved the older music. I suppose they did that though to show the differences between the characters. It doesn't make me like the musical choice, but I think I get why they did it.

I also thought all of the actors and actresses were just perfect in their respective roles. I don't have any complaints there at all.

I'd give it about a 7.5-8.0 for the quality of the film itself, and a solid 8.5 when talking just about how much I was entertained by it.

It's a far better film, both in quality and entertainment value, than any of the recent horror films like The Ring and The Grudge. That much is for damn sure.

Sounds like just another crappy scary movie from critic and user reviewers. This genre is not doing so well at all is it? Its like 14th one in row stuck around the C- category.

This movie just rips off the plot from and mixes it with The screenwriter, Freddie Krueger, is a hack.

can someone use tags and actually give the ending away? thanks much.

sorry, I don't know how clear all that is...

its pretty clear thanks. but when you say

So, Ms. Hudson herself must come here to explain the ending. Movie must not be that good....;)

haha

Chris told me to get online to see what the DVDTalk folks thought of the movie. He was irritated by it because he knew the "twist" very early.

It's funny how a name makes people think different things. I saw the poster's pseudonym and only thought of the Beatles song "Penny Lane" until I read your post and thought "Oh yeah, that Cameron Crowe movie - her character's name was Penny Lane in it, wasn't it? She must've stolen that from the Beatles. So that wasn't her real name in that movie, was it? Damn lying groupie!"

A little off topic, but there is an area of Tallahassee,FL near the university that has streets named after Beatles songs, one of which is call Penny Lane.

Back to the movie, this isn't something where the twist comes so far out of left field it doesn't make any real sense with the rest of the movie is it? Let me be frank, this isn't an ending that's been done in every horror movie made in the past five years since sixth sense or the ring, right? If it's original and non-formulaic I may check it out. The movie's screenwriter (Ehren Kruger) doesn't give me much confidence to be honest, everytime I see one of his movies I get the feeling he put the twist on with an "I'm so clever!" smirk on his face.

It's not THAT ending.

It isn't original, but it's a great ending. Very dark, considering these days when studios are terrified of dark.

I had to have read that wrong, as we have to be in darkest, most violent period ever for movies, games and entertainment. Little scary movies like Something Wicked This Way Comes, Silver Bullet or Lost Boys seems long gone in this genre. Lately they all seem to be disgusting likely gross and morbid like Hide and Seek. My 2cents at least.

True.

I mean in the PG-13 sense. And KEY ends on a dark, disturbing note.



R-rated stuff is better than ever.

actually, you're both kind of right. I picked "Penny Lane" because I really liked Almost Famous and the Beatles are my all-time favorite band.

..and at one point she looked like the character in the movie, and she happens to be with an attorney now...and I just saw the movie...don't want to tick this girl off! ;)


Saw it. Didn't really know what to think at first, but in retrospect, this was a very dark movie with a dark ending and all.

I may not be judging this movie fairly, as I love Southern Gothic, voodoo lore, Louisiana, and Kate Hudson, so this movie had it all for me. Let me say this much:

Kate Hudson= hot

I also really enjoyed this movie. Anyone movie that makes you think, works

I saw this tonight. There was a thunderstorm, so it was the perfect mood for this film. Even though it wasn't scary at all, it was pretty creepy and I loved the atmosphere. I figured out the twist early on, but I still liked that the ending was dark.

Interesting ending. Not enough to get me see this random horror flick of the month but interesting.

Seen it tonight, and I liked it. Lots of girls in the audience that seemed to be scared during parts. Even though i thought it wasnt scary it had a good atmosphere and good acting and I liked the ending. All that Vodoo and Hodoo (not sure if its spelled right) is interesting stuff.

Kate Hudson looked the hottest i have ever seen her in this movie :)

I saw it because a friend recommended it and wanted me to see it.

Before I saw it, the only thing he told me was...

I thought it was a pretty solid movie. Much better than I had expected.



So I thought Kate Hudson was great and did a good job carrying the movie with the help of the excellent supporting cast. A solid thriller not a scarefest, but worth seeing.

MATT

Okay, I have to ask a couple of questions.

First, the year 1962 seems to be of specific importance but, to my thinking through of this, it doesn't fully make sense. Justify and Cecile take the kids and watch them die. Okay, that makes sense. Great twist too when you realize later that this is what happened. But then you're told that the kids died of a stroke in 1962. Thus Justify and Cecile were now in the kids bodies and they were getting old so they made their next switch around 1962. If that's in any way accurate, something doesn't make sense. We seem to have missed an entire generation here.

The suggestion is that Justify went from Justify to Martin Thorpe (the boy child) to the lawyer. If he took the lawyer in 1962, the lawyer would now appear to be roughly 70 years old. It appears as if he took the lawyer just recently. If so, who did Justify inhabit between 1962 and 2005? Remember, they said the kids died of strokes in 1962. If you assume they were 70 at the time, that means the original switch happened about 60 years prior or sometime around 1900, which fits the look and presentation of the clips showing the original story.

What am I missing here?

GRRRR, I tried to hide the two middle paragraphs above and when it didn't work i figured I'd just edit it but see no support for editing existing messages.

I really enjoyed the film. Great atmosphere, good storyline, and good acting. Very pleasantly surprised.

Just saw this today. One thing I didn't catch, and if I missed it mentioned in this thread I'm sorry, but

Did anyone catch Ebert and Roeper's review of this? What exactly were they talking about? They didn't want to give spoilers, but it confused me.

Regardless, I saw it and really enjoyed it a lot. Much better than I expected. A lot like IMO, which I really enjoyed as well and thought was vastly underrated.

You may want to inviso text that bit eh? Anyone who has seen that film will probably know where Skeleton Key is going to end up! I thought of too but I think that's only because of the ending...other than that, I don't think the two have much in common. I wasn't a big fan of but like I said earlier, really liked The Skeleton Key a lot.

MATT

Went back and spoilered.

Just went back and listened to the Ebert/Roeper podcast, and to me, it seemed like Ebert wasn't sure

Decent Thriller. I give it a Solid 'B'.

Just caught this last night. I was saddened a bit by the New Orleans scenery in the film. Ya know, beings it's all gone now :(

I know what u mean. I saw it Friday and I had forgotten where the movie took place. Then I was like Damn.

Good movie. It wasn't boring, so that's a good thing.

Plus it has Goldielocks in it. :drool:

Knowing nothing about the writer and his penchant for twists, I caught this on Friday night. I was pretty fed up with the story and found it to be extremely okay, up until the ending. Like the Usual Suspects, I thought I had the ending figured out, only to be duped in the film's final moments. In retrospect, the twist made the movie better for me, and I thought it was a solid film.