She incapacitates Violet and attempts to escape the house with Ben, but the front gate is chained shut. Increasingly convinced of hoodoo's authenticity, Caroline fears that Violet will soon cast the spell on Ben.Ĭaroline discovers that Violet is unable to pass a line of brick dust laid across one of the house's doorways, confirming her suspicions. She asks one of the proprietors, a blind woman, about the Conjure of Sacrifice, which she learns is a spell wherein the caster steals the remaining years of life from the victim. They travel to a gas station that Caroline previously noted was lined with brick dust, which she was told is a hoodoo defense supposedly, no one who means one harm can pass a line of brick dust. After she conducts the ritual, Ben regains some ability to move and speak and he begs Caroline to get him away from Violet.Ĭaroline tells Luke she is suspicious of Violet, but he remains skeptical.

Taking advice from her friend Jill, Caroline visits a hidden hoodoo shop in a nearby laundromat, where a hoodoo woman gives her tools and instructions to cure Ben. Caroline borrows a phonograph record from the attic: Conjure of Sacrifice, a recording of Papa Justify reciting a hoodoo ritual.Ĭaroline surmises that Ben's stroke was caused by hoodoo, but believes that his paralytic state is a nocebo effect induced by his own belief, rather than something supernatural. Violet tells Caroline that they keep no mirrors in the house because they see reflections of Cecile and Justify in them. The servants, Mama Cecile and Papa Justify, were renowned hoodoo practitioners they were lynched after conducting a ritual with the owners' two children, from whom Violet and Ben later bought the house. Caroline confronts Violet, who reveals that the room used to belong to two African American servants who were employed at the house 90 years before. She discovers a secret room filled with ritual paraphernalia. At the insistence of the family's estate lawyer, Luke Marshall, Caroline accepts the position.Īfter Ben attempts to escape his room during a storm, Caroline investigates the house's attic, where Violet said Ben suffered his stroke she uses a skeleton key which Violet gave her.

The aging matron of the house, Violet Devereaux, needs help looking after her husband Benjamin, who was mostly paralyzed by an apparent stroke. The narrative follows a New Orleans hospice nurse who begins a job at a Terrebonne Parish plantation home, and becomes entangled in a supernatural mystery involving the house, its former inhabitants, and Hoodoo rituals and spells that took place there.Ĭaroline Ellis, a hospice aide, quits her position at a nursing home and is hired as the caretaker of an isolated plantation house in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. The Skeleton Key is a 2005 American Southern Gothic supernatural horror film directed by Iain Softley, written by Ehren Kruger, and starring Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, and Joy Bryant.

Skeleton key near me