I was pleasantly surprised. The actors all create interesting, believable characters, it was filmed in and around areas I am very familiar with, and it has an unusual and creepy story. It was all brought together very well, and I consider it a better movie than its IMDb rating suggests. One of the better recent horror movies.
Kate Hudson plays Caroline Ellis, a hospice care nurse who gets disenchanted with the profit motivated facility she works for, and finds a job in an old plantation home near the swamps, caring for an older man Ben Devereaux (John Hurt) who apparently had a stroke recently and is bound to a bed and a wheelchair, unable to talk.
Gena Rowlands plays the man's wife, Violet Devereaux, who treats Caroline suspiciously and comments that she wouldn't understand the house and its ways, as if the house were a person.
The 4th main character is Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), a young lawyer the family recently hired to revise the will and do some estate planning.
Right away Caroline senses that all is not right in the house. She is given a skeleton key which opens all locks in the house except one, the door in the attic. So, naturally, Caroline wants to find what is behind that door, and the strange rattling she hears coming from that direction.
As the movie explains, Voodoo is a belief system, a sort of religion. Hoodoo is not related to Voodoo, it is a series of magic and spells that work ONLY AFTER A PERSON BELIEVES IN THEM.
MAJOR SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE. Old photos and dreams introduce us to Papa Justify, a black man that lived there almost 100 years ago, and he and his wife were hanged and burned. But the core of the story is Hoodoo and a prayer to the devil that Papa Justify had perfected. You don't get eternal life but, if you sacrifice someone else, you get the years they have left. Right before the hanging and burning years earlier, Justify and his woman had gotten their spirits into two white children, so they survived while it really was the children who were hung (appearing to be the older black couple). Several times since them they had lured young people to their house to repeat the process. It was actually the young lawyer in the old man's body, as Ben had already occupied the body of the young lawyer, and was helping his wife, Violet, lure young Caroline into position in the attic so Violet could occupy her young body, and send Caroline, with a stroke, into the old woman's body. And they do, the will gives the house to Caroline, who of course, is now Violet. They comment that it gets harder every time, the younger generation just doesn't "believe" anymore (in Hoodoo)!
Kate Hudson plays Caroline Ellis, a hospice care nurse who gets disenchanted with the profit motivated facility she works for, and finds a job in an old plantation home near the swamps, caring for an older man Ben Devereaux (John Hurt) who apparently had a stroke recently and is bound to a bed and a wheelchair, unable to talk.
Gena Rowlands plays the man's wife, Violet Devereaux, who treats Caroline suspiciously and comments that she wouldn't understand the house and its ways, as if the house were a person.
The 4th main character is Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), a young lawyer the family recently hired to revise the will and do some estate planning.
Right away Caroline senses that all is not right in the house. She is given a skeleton key which opens all locks in the house except one, the door in the attic. So, naturally, Caroline wants to find what is behind that door, and the strange rattling she hears coming from that direction.
As the movie explains, Voodoo is a belief system, a sort of religion. Hoodoo is not related to Voodoo, it is a series of magic and spells that work ONLY AFTER A PERSON BELIEVES IN THEM.
MAJOR SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE. Old photos and dreams introduce us to Papa Justify, a black man that lived there almost 100 years ago, and he and his wife were hanged and burned. But the core of the story is Hoodoo and a prayer to the devil that Papa Justify had perfected. You don't get eternal life but, if you sacrifice someone else, you get the years they have left. Right before the hanging and burning years earlier, Justify and his woman had gotten their spirits into two white children, so they survived while it really was the children who were hung (appearing to be the older black couple). Several times since them they had lured young people to their house to repeat the process. It was actually the young lawyer in the old man's body, as Ben had already occupied the body of the young lawyer, and was helping his wife, Violet, lure young Caroline into position in the attic so Violet could occupy her young body, and send Caroline, with a stroke, into the old woman's body. And they do, the will gives the house to Caroline, who of course, is now Violet. They comment that it gets harder every time, the younger generation just doesn't "believe" anymore (in Hoodoo)!