I guarantee that you missed some of these fine details in the movie The Skeleton Key (2005). I know because, I have. This movie looks simple, but it is worthy of at least one re-watch to fully appreciate its plot twist. And you need to pay closer attention to fine details, so you wouldn’t miss crucial details of the plot like how I missed a key detail on my first watch-through.
Apart from major details, there are some minor, but interesting details spread through the film. If you caught them all from a single watch-through, you have a very sharp mind.
Hipster patient
First one is about the hospice patient who was under Caroline’s care. For the hospice staff he was just another patient, a statistic on their records, just usual business. Caroline was tasked to throw away his stuff because his relatives couldn’t care less about him to come and pick them up.
Before he was reduced to this bedridden husk of his former self, he was living a rebellious life. How do I know this? Well, you need to look at his most valued personal stuff in his box. He wasn’t a loner. There is a framed picture of him with a woman. So we can assume that he had a loved one in the past. There are few pins with slogans. Among them, “Make love not war” And “Stamp out reality” are popular anti-war slogans from the 60s which were used to protest the Vietnam War.
“Stamp out reality” also a counter-culture slogan that ties with the psychedelic use to alter one’s reality. Judging from that pin and another “Stoned” pin, it seems like the old man was a stoner in his youth.
All these pins, peace sign, and the “Live Fast Die Young” key tag suggest that he was a rebellious, counter-culture hipster.
Caroline took patient’s stuff
He also had a Walkman and a bunch of mix tapes in his possession. We can see Caroline is listening to a Walkman while she is looking for a new job. I’m not sure whether she took the Walkman from the dead man or not. But she definitely took his “Live Fast Die Young” key tag to put on her car key.
Old woman on the bayou road
Ok this one should be obvious, but I embarrassingly failed to realize that the old woman on the bayou road is the same one in the creepy gas station. I thought the scene with the old woman on the road was there to show the crazy vibe in the bayou because that picture doesn’t make sense. Here is a very old woman who can barely walk, with a baby stroller. You can’t see a baby, but there are some kind of weeds or herbs on the stroller. She could be a crazy woman wandering around in the bayou collecting garbage, but she is with a perfectly normal looking young girl. Old woman is white and the young girl is black. I always wondered who were they and why we do not get to see them again.
Finally something clicked in my brain and I realized that the woman with the stroller and the woman with the baby are the same person. How stupid of me.
Old woman in the creepy gas station sympathizes about witches.
Old woman isn’t crazy, but she is not right in the head either. Anyone in their right mind cannot condone Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s actions against their employer’s two children. As a Hoodoo practitioner herself, the old woman knows what Papa Justify and Mama Cecile were up to. She is the one who told Caroline about the “Conjure of Sacrifice” and what it does. With all that knowledge she still sympathizes with Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s fate.
She says this about them “The strongest conjuration of all. They say Justify discovered it. But he got killed before he learned to work it. Him and his poor wife both.”
Who is she calling poor? The two wicked witches who were ready to sacrifice two innocent children for their selfish gains?
Photo in the creepy gas station and Papa Justify’s descendants
May be there is another reason for her to side with the evil witches aside from their common interest in Hoodoo. Look at this photo which is in the creepy gas station. It’s not clear, but I think that is Papa Justify in that photo.
If that’s Papa Justify, then there are few possibilities: Papa Justify was a pioneer in Hoodoo witchcraft. He was the one who allegedly discovered the immortality. So some Hoodoo practitioners may keep his photo to revere him.
Photo sits on a speaker and the speaker is playing some kind of a sermon similar to Papa Justify’s recordings. It could be one of Justify’s own sermons. I think I can barely hear the word “Justify” in that sermon, but I’m not sure. People in this Hoodoo shack could be either Papa Justify’s disciples or descendants or both.
Whoever they are, Papa Justify means no harm toward them because Justify in Luke Marshall’s body could cross the brick dust line which was protecting the old woman’s hut.
Violet sneakily gathers information about Caroline
Let’s go from Papa Justify to Mama Cecile. Mama Cecile who is in Violet Deverox’s body uses small talk to gather information about Caroline. Papa Justify or rather, Papa Justify in lawyer Luke Marshall’s body was spying on Caroline. So they already have their reasons to choose her as the next host for Mama Cecile. But still, Mama Cecile extracts some additional information from Caroline to make sure that Caroline is a perfect fit.
First, Violet half-jokingly asks about whether Caroline has tattoos or not. Caroline says “Not where you can see.” Well, she has a tattoo just above her left butt cheek, which is not visible when she is fully clothed.
In the scene where we can see her tattoo, there is someone moving behind Caroline. We can see their shadow. That could be Violet snooping around to check out Caroline’s hidden tattoos. I have a hypotheses about the importance of tattoos. I’ll talk about it later.
Then Violet asks Caroline about her parents and learns that her mom abandoned her when she was little and her father died a year ago.
Finally, Violet asks Caroline about her religion. Caroline answers that she tries to keep an open mind, to which Violet says, “That’s good. That’s very good.”
She asks all these questions on three separate occasions. When you look at them all at once, you can clearly see that Violet or rather Mama Cecile is vetting Caroline.
Now she knows that Caroline does not have parents who would notice sudden changes in their daughter’s behavior when the body jump happens. So no one close enough to come looking for her the second they realizes that Caroline is acting weird. As far as we know Caroline only has her roommate Jill as a close one. No other friends, no relatives, no lovers. Since she has left her hospice job, no colleagues either.
Second point, about the religion, I have a feeling that it is hard or not possible to possess religious ones using Hoodoo. I think religious people get extra protection against Hoodoo because of their faiths. And also, religious people do not stick around to mess with witchcraft, they leave.
On the other hand it is harder to convince a skeptic to believe that Hoodoo is real. So someone like Caroline, who is an agnostic and open-minded person, is a perfect candidate for their plan.
About tattoos. Distinct tattoos can be used to describe a person to identify them. But in here that doesn’t matter because people are not going missing. No one is going to launch an investigation to find a missing person.
My hypotheses is that some tattoos can provide protection against Hoodoo spells. Especially religious symbols. Even Hoodoo practitioners use religious symbols like cross shaped candlesfor some rituals. You can see many statues and candles that shaped like religious symbols in Mama Cynthia’s Hoodoo shop.
Violet Devereaux and Mama Cecile smoke same black cigarettes
After watching the movie, we now know that it wasn’t Violet herself doing all these evil things. We have no idea what she was like before the body jump. It was Mama Cecile all along, possessing Violet’s body. There is a small clue from the early in the movie to hint this. It’s Violet’s cigarette addiction. She uses this distinct black thin cigarettes.
You may say ‘of course it is even a plot point to show Caroline picking up a cigarette from Violet’s purse to indicate the body jump, so it’s not a secret or a hidden clue.’ Yes, that’s true. But if you play closer attention you can see that Mama Cecile is smoking same kind of cigarettes in the flashbacks which are shown early in the movie.
You’ll notice this detail on your re-watches because you already know what to look for. But if you made this connection on your first watch-through, you are a genius, which I am not.
Listening to the record does something to Caroline
Next one is bit tricky. It’s identifying the exact moment Caroline starts to believe in Hoodoo. Even at the very end she tries to deny that she is believing in Hoodoo. First I thought that she was telling the truth. I thought her change of mind was subconscious and she realized it too late.
But cracks in her skepticism starts to appear way early. First, something happens to her when she is listening to the record “Papa Justify’s Conjure of Sacrifice”. Looks like a shiver runs through her body as a response to some invisible force.
Ben’s response to the Hoodoo remedy and Caroline’s reaction
In the beginning, Caroline treats Hoodoo as some make-believe superstition. She tries to use Hoodoo remedies on paralyzed old man Ben as a psychosomatic treatment because she believes that he believes Hoodoo is real. But the Hoodoo remedy works exceeding her expectations. Paralyzed man starts to move and begins to talk. In her disbelief Caroline says “It’s all in your head.” Even though she says that out loud, I think this is the moment she starts to believe that there is some truth to all this mystic nonsense. So when she has had a weird nightmare, she is spooked enough to leave the house. She stays behind only because she cannot make up her mind to leave poor Ben behind.
Caroline finally admits that it’s all true, Hoodoo is real
Caroline tests the brick dust trick on Violet. Violet doesn’t cross the line. Later, when she is trying to escape from the witches, Caroline uses brick dust lines to block off Violet and the lawyer. At this point she is fully believing in hoodoo.
She even calls her friend Jill and says “Jill, I’m in trouble. It’s real. It’s all real.”
So when she draws the “Conjuration of Supreme Protection”, she fully expects it to protect her from Violet and the lawyer, Luke Marshall.
As the last ditch attempt, she tries to deny her belief. But she isn’t fooling anyone.
Escape by boat was Ben’s plan
Caroline almost escaped from the grasp of witches when she ran away from the house. She tried to take paralyzed old Ben with her, but she crashed her car. So she escaped through the bayou using a boat. She didn’t randomly stumble upon the boat. She already knew that there was an escape route through the swamp because that’s how Ben was trying to escape from Violet.
Early in the movie, Ben crawls out from his window and falls to the ground. Even after the fall he tries to crawl somewhere. In the next morning Caroline visits the fall-site. She sees that Ben wasn’t crawling toward cars.
So Caroline says “Where did you think you were going?”
After looking around she sees that Ben was trying to crawl toward the boat.
Lawyer says “good night child” and he wouldn’t know about dying.
Movie leads you to believe that Violet and Luke Marshall are trying to perform Papa Justify’s “Conjure of Sacrifice” to prolong their lifespans. But the plot twist of the movie reveals that they are non-other than Papa Justify and Mama Cecile themselves in other people’s bodies. They are very good at keeping their cover. But Luke Marshall indicates that he is older than he looks little bit earlier before the plot twist. Since I had no idea what to look for, I missed that clue the first time.
When Caroline discovers lawyer’s secret that he is also a Hoodoo practitioner, lawyer attacks Caroline to subdue her. Then he says “good night child” to unconscious Caroline. Luke Marshall could be in his mid-thirties, but Papa Justify is way older than his host body. At this point he doesn’t have a reason to hide his true age.
After that, Justify takes Caroline back to Violet. During the car ride he goes on a tangent and says “everywhere you look, it’s a whole new world all around you. It’s like being born or dying. Of course, I wouldn’t know.”
He talks like someone who has cheated death, which he has, multiple times.
Don’t scratch her up.
When Justify brings Caroline to Violet, or rather Mama Cecile, she says something to indicate the fate of Caroline. Everything Caroline has found out in that house suggests that Violet and Luke are going to kill Caroline as a sacrifice. But later, Violet reveals that the actual plan is not to kill her, but to possess her body.
That’s why she tells Justify, “Don’t scratch her up any more than she already is,” after he drags Caroline into the house. Mama Cecile wants to keep her next host body intact.
Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s all victims were white.
There is an interesting fact about their hosts. All of their victims: two children, Ben and Violet Deveraux, Luke Marshall and finally Caroline are white. Not a single black person. Not because of lack of trying.
Mama Cecile says “I told you I wanted a black one this time.”
Papa Justify points out the problem by saying “You know the black ones never stay.”
Black people are more cautious about Hoodoo. Caroline’s friend Jill says that she doesn’t believe in Hoodoo, but at the same time she refuses to even set foot in Mama Cynthia’s Hoodoo shop.
Ben’s previous caregiver Hallie has bailed out from that job because her mother has warned her about the dark history of that house. Hallie warns Caroline to leave the house before she starts to believe in Hoodoo.
As I understand, both Jill and Hallie are born and raised locals of New Orleans. Jill has an aunt who is into Hoodoo. Hallie’s mother knows about the tragic fate of Martin and Grace Thorpe (two children). So they are weary enough to stay away from anything spooky.
On the other hand Caroline, Ben and Violet are outsiders. Caroline originally came from Hoboken, New Jersey. Violet and Ben came from Savannah, Georgia.
Caroline fell victim to her curiosity. Justify and Cecile need curious, open minded people as their targets. Hoodoo spells do not work on full skeptics. People who are aware of Hoodoo and local history easily get spooked and bail out if they sense something is wrong. So Papa Justify and Mama Cecile have to target people who are in the sweet middle spot to the both ends.
“There, there, Caroline.”
I completely missed this next point on my first watch-trough. I caught it later and it completely changed my understanding of the movie. It’s only one word, so it is easy to miss. After Mama Cecile jump from Violet’s body to Caroline’s body she feeds a potion to induce paralysis on Violet.
When she feeds it, she says “there, there, Caroline.” not “there, there, Violet.”
This one word changes the fate of their victims. If it’s “there, there, Violet” that means Mama Cecile was possessing Violet and now Violet is free and in control of her body. Initially I thought that victims get to be free after losing a long chunk of their lives to evil witches’ control. Well not for long, but at least they can die as themselves.
But that’s not what’s happening here. Cecile says “there, there, Caroline.” Violet is not in her body. She was long gone. Justify and Cecile are not possessing their victims. They completely displace their victims’ souls and take complete control of their bodies. Victims’ souls get trapped in witches’ old host bodies. So these young souls have to die, trapped in some stranger’s body. At the end of the movie where Violet and Ben ride an ambulance to go to the hospital, they look at each other with knowing looks. That’s not a reunion of long lost partners. That’s the helpless looks of Caroline Ellis and Luke Marshall.
I wrote a separate article to explain their body switching mechanism. Read that to get a clear picture about who is in whose body at what time.
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