nuelow

I had the pleasure of watching this film at the Seattle Independent Film Festival, one of its first public screenings. From the opening scene with Jesus, Elvis and a Catholic school girl hitchhiking on a desolate Nevada road, to the episodic, nonlinear structure that retains portions of the film's stage-play origins while also expanding beyond it to take advantage of the different medium that is film, through the many pop cultural references and social commentary, and the unending barrage of bizarre and hilarious jokes, this is a film that manages to both be touching and hilarious while keeping you engaged for its entire running time.

According the director/writer/star, everything in the film is based on true-to-life events. Knowing that makes this film even funnier. Keep an eye out for this one at a film festival near you. Or, even better, snatch it up when it appears on for rent or sale on DVD/online.

What a nifty little flick! It's funny, surprising, shocking... everything so many "slasher flicks" wish they could be but fail at.

The film also features some excellent photography and editing, great acting, fantastic use of music and sound--the twangs and squishy sounds during the banjo murder were both funny and disturbing--and a clever script that sports more effective twists that you find in most horror films running ten times as long this is truly a superior effort.

The only real complaint I have with the film is the final couple of seconds. I think it would have ended stronger without the "eyes snap open" cliché at the very end.

"Skeleton Key" is a very funny movie. The people who squeezed the scripts for "Disaster Movie" and "An Amercian Carol" from their colons should watch before they try their hands at comedy again. Maybe they could learn a thing or two.

While I don't make excuses for indie films when it comes to technical incompetence--"White Zombie" was an indie film, "A Carnival of Souls" was an indie film, "Night Tide" was an indie film, "A Bucket of Blood" was an indie film, just to name a few of the thousands of excellent indie films that have been made since the arrival of sound in films--there's no point in knocking "Skeleton Key" for bad sound, lighting, or photography. Hell, doing that is missing one of the jokes, I think.

This is a spoof of horror films along the lines of "Disaster Movie" and "An American Carol." More to the point, it's a spoof of low-budget, indie horror films. It embraces it's cheapness and wears it like a badge of honor. In fact, based on other John Johnson films I've seen--like "Alucard"--I think some of the "incompetence" here is intentional.

"Skeleton Key" may not be a masterpiece, but it's also not as bad as some posters attempt t portray it. And it's far better than a number of recent Hollywood attempts at making movies along this line.