The Skeleton Key
When hospice aide Caroline takes a job caring for an isolated Louisiana matriarch’s bedridden husband, she uncovers a hidden room of dark hoodoo rituals that threatens to unleash a deadly curse unless she can unravel the house’s haunted past and save everyone alive.
“Fearing is believing.”
Synopsis
A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home becomes involved in a mystery tied to the house's dark history.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 37
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Joe HutshingShot by Dan MindelScored by Edward ShearmurDesigned by John Beard
Box Office
2005 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.2× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$94.0M
US & Canada: $47.9M — 51% of worldwide · International: $46.1M (49%)
Opening weekend: $16.1M — 34% of its US run.
Opening week (7-day): $22.7M — 47% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 2,771 theaters
Full synopsis
Also known as
- Der Verbotene Schlüsselde
- La Porte des secretsfr
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Cast & Crew
37 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Kate Hudson
as Caroline Ellis
Peter Sarsgaard
as Luke Marshall
Gena Rowlands
as Violet Devereaux
Joy Bryant
as Jill
John Hurt
as Ben Devereaux
Maxine Barnett
as Mama Cynthia
Marion Zinser
as Bayou Woman
Fahnlohnee R Harris
as Hallie
Deneen Tyler
as Desk Nurse
Ann Dalrymple
as C.N.A.
Trula M Marcus
as Nurse Trula
Jen Apgar
as Madeleine Thorpe
Supporting cast
14Thomas Uskali
as Robertson Thorpe
Jamie Lee Redmon
as Grace Thorpe
Forrest Landis
as Martin Thorpe
Tonya Staten
as Nurse Audrey
Isaach De Bankole
as Creole Gas Station Owner
Christa Thorne
as Creole Mother
Ronald Mccall
as Papa Justify
Jeryl Prescott
as Mama Cecile
Lakrishi Kindred
as Frail Customer
Sabah
as Luke's Secretary
Joe Chrest
as Paramedic
David J Curtis
as Party Guest
Tiffany Helland
as Party Guest
Brian Ruppert
as Party Guest
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
4Other crew
6Parents Guide
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