In The Skeleton Key (2005) movie nothing is what it seems. People are not who you think they are. Dead people are not actually dead. Superstitions are not mere superstitions.
In a glance movie plot looks like this. There is an old creepy house in a bayou, an old couple lives in there. People in this area believe in their own local brand of witchcraft called Hoodoo. Hoodoo is different from Voodoo. There were two famous Hoodoo practitioners used to live in the house. They were famous for trying to create an immortality spell. Their belongings including magical trinkets and spell books are still in the attic of that house. Old woman and her lawyer are practicing Hoodoo and they are trying to complete the immortality spell. They have lured a young woman in to the house to use as a sacrifice. In a typical movie, you would expect the young woman to fight against evil witches and escape this house of horror. The protagonist in this movie, the young woman nearly managed to win. Or at least, that’s what you believe until the very end of the movie. Then a massive plot twist happens. It reveals that the young woman never had an upper hand. She was walking into a trap which was carefully laid out by the old woman and the lawyer. The young woman was chosen as a sacrifice but not in the traditional sense. Witches were not going to kill her. Instead they chose her to be the next host for a witch who was thought to have died a long time ago.
With this revelation you get to know the real identities of the characters. If you are interested in a re-watch, this knowledge of their true identities gives you a new perspective to enjoy the movie. Especially some dialogs between the old woman and the young lawyer give different meanings when you know their true identities and their real relationship with one another.
I almost missed another important layer of detail about people’s identities. Before I explain what I nearly missed, let’s figure out real identities of these characters and who is who.
Let’s untangle the real identities of characters
Papa Justify and Mama Cecile were a married couple. They were servants to the original owner of the massive house in the bayou. They were renowned witch doctors among Hoodoo practitioners in their time. They were famously trying to create a sacrificial ritual to prolong their lives. They tried to sacrifice their master’s two children but were caught. For their crime, they were lynched by an angry mob. At least that’s what everyone thought. Even Hoodoo practitioners who actually aware of Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s research got one thing wrong about the nature of the sacrifice. They thought that Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s method required to kill someone to steal their remaining lifetime to add on to your lifetime so you could live longer than a normal human.
What the ritual actually does is it allows the witch to transfer their soul to the sacrifice’s body. That way the witch can live the rest of the sacrifice’s life using their body as a host. When the host gets old witch needs to find a new body to jump in to.
So starting from the beginning. Papa Justify and Mama Cecile successfully jumped into their master’s two children’s bodies. When these two siblings grew old they jumped in to Ben and Violet Deverox’s bodies. They are the two old couple living in the house that we see in the movie. Since they are too old it’s time to move onto new bodies. Papa Justify has already jumped into his new host which is the young lawyer, Luke Marshall. Actually in the movie we are seeing Mama Cecile making her jump from her old host to her new host which is the young nurse, Caroline Ellis.
Fate of Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s old hosts
So it is clear that Papa Justify and Mama Cecile have jumped into two siblings, then into the old couple and finally jumped into the lawyer and the nurse. What happens to their old hosts? This is where I almost lost a very crucial detail. I thought two witches are possessing their hosts. So when they leave their old hosts for new ones, old hosts become themselves and regain control of their bodies. And that’s why two witches use Hoodoo remedies to induce paralysis in their old hosts to silence them.
So again from the beginning, Papa Justify and Mama Cecile transferred their consciousness into two children and possessed them. The angry mob hanged two empty vessels. Then they jumped from two siblings to Ben and Violet’s bodies and killed off two siblings by inducing strokes. Then they jumped from Ben and Violet to the lawyer and Caroline. Old Ben was already on induces paralysis. We actually see that Mama Cecile force feeds some potion to Violet to induce paralysis in her. In the ambulance scene old Ben and Violet are looking at each other helplessly. But actually that’s not what’s happening there. There is another layer of detail which is going to make things even more sinister.
Single word, different fate
When Mama Cecile who is now in her new host body, feeds the paralyzing potion to the old woman, she does not call her as Violet. Instead she says “there, there Caroline.” Which means Violet is not in her body. Her body is now occupied by Caroline’s consciousness. So what really, really happening is Papa Justify and Mama Cecile are not possessing their host bodies. They completely swap their souls with souls of their hosts. So when they jump to new hosts, hosts’ souls get transferred in to witches’ old bodies.
So back to the beginning. Papa Justify and Mama Cecile swapped their souls with the two children. Angry mob actually hanged the two siblings who were in Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s original bodies. When two siblings’ bodies got old, two witches swapped bodies with Ben and Violet Deverox. Ben and Violet died in two siblings’ bodies. When Ben and Violet’s bodies got old, Papa Justify swapped body with the young lawyer. The paralyzed old man who was desperately trying to get help is actually the young lawyer who was trapped in an old man’s body. When Mama Cecile swapped body with the young nurse Caroline, Caroline got trapped in old Violet’s body. She desperately tried to get attention of her best friend Jill. But induced paralysis prevented her from seeking help. The paralyzed old couple in the ambulance who were exchanging helpless, knowing looks are not Ben and Violet Deverox but very young souls of Caroline Elise and the lawyer, Luke Marshall. If everything works out according to Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s plan, both Caroline and the lawyer would soon die in the old couple’s bodies possibly from magically induced strokes.
Sadly this story doesn’t have a happy ending. Evil witches win at the end. In that regard, The Skeleton Key has similarities to the Stephen King’s short story Gramma. Both stories are about evil witches who are selfish enough to sacrifice innocent souls to prolong their lives.
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