5 Ninja Stars

This movie is a little bit out there but the story is actually somewhat engaging once you get past the first 20 minutes’ slow tempo. Kate Hudson plays Caroline, a hospice care worker, who gets emotionally attached to her patients perhaps to subconsciously make amends for not being present when her own father passed away. The movie takes place in hot and humid Louisiana where Caroline has taken the live-in job of caring for some old terminally ill guy named Ben Devereaux who apparently suffered a stroke. Living in Ben’s old spooky home, Caroline has to constantly deal with his creepily strange, meddlesome wife, Violet. We are introduced to the art of hoodoo, which should not be confused with voodoo and is apparently more magic than religion. Anyway, the story gains some momentum stemming from Caroline’s relationship with Ben, no one does the hoodoo like Caroline-do, and things get quite suspenseful towards the climactic finale in the tradition of the Sixth Sense, Hide and Seek, and the Others. This somewhat dark and creepy movie is not without its loopholes and is definitely more thriller than horror.