Streaming is the place where long-forgotten, unseen, underrated, and occasionally terrible horror movies go to find an entirely new audience, with many of them embarking on an unexpected second life. Having become one of the Top 10 titles in the United Kingdom, we can now add 2005’s The Skeleton Key to the list.
As per FlixPatrol, the startlingly average supernatural chiller ranks as the seventh-top title in the U.K., and its performance on the international charts has seen the film enter Netflix’s global most-watched list. It wasn’t exactly a massive hit at the time, earning $95 million on a $43 budget, but The Skeleton Key was far from being a flop, either.
Kate Hudson headlines as a New Orleans nurse who quits her job to work for an elderly couple, with John Hurt’s husband in particularly poor health. Snooping around their creaking mansion, she begins to uncover a number of mysterious artifacts and strange goings-on, ultimately discovering that the house has a deep, dark, and terrifying secret.
A fairly standard haunted house story elevated by some decent for the time mid-2000s visual effects and a committed performance from Hudson, The Skeleton Key still didn’t manage to generate much love from critics. Devolving into confused chaos by the end of the third act, any sense of genuine tension or dread is thrown out of the window in favor of jump scares, broad strokes terror, and CGI excess.
Of course, being a fairly splashy horror with a recognizable star in the lead, The Skeleton Key was almost guaranteed to find a second wind on Netflix, and that’s exactly what happened.
Published: Apr 5, 2022 02:18 am