The Skeleton Key/Fridge

Fridge Horror

• In The Skeleton Key, the villains are two servants who were lynched for performing "hoodoo" on the house's children, but who secretly survived by swapping their souls with another body. The couple's initial victims were implied to be the children... meaning that two very confused and frightened children were lynched by an angry mob led by their own parents.
  • Two confused, frightened, and paralyzed children.
  • The plight of Ben/Luke is a lot more grim when you realize the twist ending. A poor, unsuspecting guy, young and with his whole life ahead of him, happens to land two seemingly sweet old folks as his clients. And then, they trick him into believing in hoodoo, perform a terrifying ritual on him, and trap him in the paralyzed body of an old man until he dies. And he appears to just be aware enough to recognize what Caroline's in for, and to beg her to rescue him.
  • Heck, the entire movie is Fridge Horror, if you think about it. Pretty much every single thing Luke and Violet say to Caroline serves as some sort of foreshadowing to their plans for her.