I can’t really handle scary movies all that well. I start hearing noises in the walls and seeing things out of the corner of my eye after I watch one.

But every so often a movie comes along that is working hard at frightening me until the ending comes and I’m so busy concentrating on the twist and how I didn’t see it coming that I forget to listen for bumps in the night.

*The Skeleton Key* is such a movie. I wanted to see it originally for Kate Hudson. I like her. She had me at *Almost Famous*. I also wanted to see it for the house. I’m a sucker for old falling down mansions that look like they could be inhabited by fading belles refusing to give up their family home even as the plaster is hitting them on the head.

I was disappointed. At first. Now, I’ve never lived in the Deep South, so I don’t know how I would look were I to perspire all the time, even in the middle of the night, but I just hated that Kate’s character was wet from head to toe in every scene she was in.

I also hated some of the decisions that she made. Now, I do admire Nancy Drew and I do have a healthy (some would say “more than healthy”) amount of curiosity, but I tend to do my research on the Internet, not wandering around spooky old falling down mansions where I could get grabbed at any moment. But, characters in horror movies apparently never –watch- horror movies because they are always going off by themselves.

But I was slowly drawn in to the mystery of the movie. The atmosphere got to me and I began to sympathize with Kate’s character Carrie. I began to wonder how I would act if I had a patient who had suffered a stroke and couldn’t communicate. I began to wonder how I would feel in the midst of apparent witchcraft.

And then...BAM! The ending came out of nowhere. Or so I first thought. But the more I contemplated it, the more I think that it makes sense. I mean, who wouldn’t want eternal life.

Tricky endings. They’re hard to pull off, but when they work, boy are they worth it.