Customer Reviews

Cold Creek Manor

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(41)
1 star:		(62)

 

 

Cold Creek Manor was supposed to be a shocking thriller with a great cast. It wasnt. This movie had no thrills, no chills. One lame jump that happens after you completly sink into stupidity.
Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid were average with their roles. The real stars were Juliette Lewis and Stephen Dorff. Stephen Dorff perfectly embodies a crazed man who deperately wants his house back. Juliette Lewis is amazing as his ... girlfriend who keeps you begging for her presence to continue endlessly.

Cold Creek Manor tells the story of a couple who find that the city is destroying their lives and the lives of their children. One day they go searching for a home and stumble upon a fenced mansion, whose gate happens to open. They go inside the house and look around. A policewoman finds them and tells them they have to leave because they are tresspassing and if they go now she won't get them in trouble. They leave, but eventually buy the house. Dennis Quaid, who plays a documentary filmmaker, finds the previous occupants whole family history and decides this will be his next film, the story of Cold Creek Manor.

One day Stephen Dorff comes wandering through the house and Quaids sons tells. They ask what he is doing and he explains that it was his house and he lost it due to late payments. Later, Dennis and Sharon are talking about redesigning and Dorff asks if they'll hire him to help since he knows the place best. They hire him. Soon things begin to turn crazy as Dorff shows signs that he wants the house that belongs to him and he'll do anything to get them out. Quaid at the same time begins to investigate the mysterious happenings of Cold Creek Manor and is shocked by his research.

This movie is horrendously predictable and not a tad scary. I was hoping that this was going to be one of the best thrillers of the year, but that didnt happen. Wait for the video folks, this one, sadly, is not theater material.

I was bored with it. Went to a free advance showing without knowing the plot and thinking that it was a ghost story. It's just another"Family-moves-into-a-house-and-is-stalked-by-a-madman" movie with all the cliches included. Quaid and Stone's characters have got to be the dumbest couple on earth! Would you invite a creepy guy who broke into your home to dinner? Believe me, you will be rolling your eyes at a number of dumb things they do.
If you have something better to do with your time than to see this movie, by all means, do it.

Once again the previews mislead the audience. I like most people I talked to thought it was a ghost story. No such luck. Dennis Quaid is great, Sharon Stone can't act her way out of a wet paper bag. I knew that going in but thought I'd suffer through her because it looked like a good movie.

The movie was ok, just ok. As I said it's not a ghost story, but just another thriller. Don't get me wrong thrillers are great but this one was very slow to get going. Once it got going it was ok. I've heard of developing the characters but this took so long the movie was over. I should have saved my money. I could have watched this on TV when I had nothing else to do and nothing else on.

This is not just a bad movie, its an awful movie. Generally, I overlook technical flaws in a movie as long as I'm entertained but this one has so many flaws, and is so lacking in entertainment value, that I can't resist. Screenplay - awful. Cinematography - awful. Sound editing - awful. Acting - dissapointing. I've seen better production values in some straight-to-video releases.

I particularly like how there is a chase through the darkened mansion and all of a sudden a light shines upon the protaganists so that we can see them.

I like Dennis Quaid but this is a performance he should hope to soon forget. Sharon Stone is showing her age and not aging gracefully. The actor who plays the bad guy does a bad Billy Zane imitation. If you want a great movie about a psycho, rent or buy Dead Calm.

T

For all of us who have complained about trailers that have all the best parts of the movie, not to mention end up being better than the movie itself, "Cold Creek Manor" is a painful reminder that there are worst things in this world. The trailer for this 2003 film sure makes it look like this is a haunted house movie in the tradition of both schlock like "The Amityville Horror" or classics like "The Haunting of Hill House." However, that proves not to be the case. This is not a haunted house movie; it is one of those films where a relatively normal family crosses a psycho and he comes after them (and their little horse too).

This film was directed by Mike Figgis, who also co-produced the effort. This becomes important because wearing one of those two hats Figgis should have realized that the use of music in this film (composed by Figgis as well) is overused. Even before you figure out what sort of movie this is you know that bad things are coming to be happening because the forboding music cues come early and often. There is not even a pretense that when Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Leah Tilson (Sharon Stone) move their family to the titular house out in the country that there are going to have a moment of happiness in this film. When you check out the deleted scenes on the DVD and see the alternative ending you have to wonder what Figgis thought was happening with this film, because the reason that what ended up on the cutting room floor was wrong is still wrong with the finale, albeit on a lesser level of wrongness.

Anyhow, the Tilson family, with daughter and son in tow, seek refuge from the hectic pace, high pressure, and crazy car drivers of the big bad city to find peace and quiet in the country. They get the house known as Cold Creek Manor for a song, including all of the contents, because the former owner could no longer pay the bills. The script by Richard Jefferies then has the Tilsons express a death wish by hiring the former owner, Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), to help fix up the place. He is an ex-con whose family is missing and he acts weird from the get go, but that is no reason to be suspicious because it is not like the Tilsons can hear that ominous music. Besides, only a few of the locals warn them they are heading into trouble, so they are blithely heading towards disaster.

Cooper is working on a documentary film about the Massie family because when they bought the contents of the house they got all the old family photographs, letters, and whatnot. You think that this is going to have a really big payoff, but not really, because that honor is reserved for those big metal hammers on the wall that Dale's grandpappy made for killing a thousand sheep each year without buying all those bullets. I sort of liked the son in this film, pretty much by default, because everybody in this film is pretty stupid and he at least had his youth in his favor. Over and over again it seems that whatever would be the wrong thing to do, these people do it and do it with enthusiasm. Ultimately, "Cold Creek Manor" has the worst quality of your standard splatter flick, where you really do not care if every single one of these characters ends up dead. I know that Stone is trying to come back from cinematic oblivion, but Quaid just had "The Rookie," so what was his excuse?

The Tilsons are a quiet Manhattan family that decides to move out from the "Dangerous" city to the country side where they feel it would be better to raise their children. They find a run-down estate called Cold Creek Manor and purchase it from the bank, who had foreclosed it from Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff) who went to prison for Manslaughter. When they move in and begin renovating it, Dale appears again and Cooper hires him to help renovate. Things happen that causes Cooper to suspect that Dale is not the helpful person he first sets off to be and Cooper, a documentarian, begins to study the history of Cold Creek Manor and finds some sinister history that theatens his family.

This movie was directed by Mike Figgis, a director who has had made good suspense movies such as "Internal Affairs" in the past and is considered to be pretty respected by Hollywood. However, he is given such a poor script that is filled with cliches and puzzling character motives that he is left with nothing to work with. And on top of that he does not lead with strong direction with all the characters. Take the first 10 minutes. Cooper, a guy who seems like he is doing fine in Manhattan, suddenly finds the city to unhealthy for his children and he, his cosmopolitan wife and city kids suddenly move, not into the suburbs (like Greenwich or Long Island) but a remote farm in a city filled with stereotypical, city hating hicks. Yes, the script is poor at showing the Tilson's disdain for the city as a place to raise children, but Figgis doesn't help by providing us with anything other than an unfortunate potential accident.

Figgis and the script also does a poor job explaining the history behind Cold Creek Manor. All we know is that it belonged to a sheep raising family called the Massies with a domineering grandfather and there was some pedophilia type of pictures that show up. The fact that Dale's previous family disappearing doesn't even appear until Cooper finds a retainer in the ground that one of the Massie children was wearing in a picture in the last third of the movie.

Another strange development is the appearance and acceptance of Dale Massey in the movie. If a guy was snooping around the house uninvited, I would not offer him a job. But the Tilson's not only offer him a job, but also give him lunch and don't even bother discussing how creepy he is after he leaves. I mean, are they all that dense? (Except for daughter Kristen).

Maybe the movie could have been saved with a clever plot twist or superior atmosphere, but that is nearly missing. It get a touch interesting when the find the Devils Throat, but it is a ripoff of "The Ring". The ending is even worse because it is provides the prototypical dumb hick who thinks he's smarter than the city folk, against the innocent, quietly intelligenct city folk who has to fight back against Redneck Rage (you know, the rich taking what belongs to them in their backyard). It is handled with such generic aplomb, I was certain I had seen this ending before many times, even though I could not name a movie off the top of my head.

Dennis Quaid plays Cooper with a fearful, submission. Cooper is the usual city-riche liberal who thinks he is doing good by providing for the local ilk. It is a character that is paper thin and Quaid does not attempt to waste his talents (he is also sort of a emotionless actor) improving on his role. Sharon Stone as the cosmopolitan Leah (even the name smells of Yuppee) is the executive fast tracking wife with questionable ethics and a sense of guilt. She plays her limited role with more realism and I could even image her being a person in real life (imagine that!).

However, the two antagonists are horrible. Stephen Dorff plays Dale. Dorff, who looks like a twin brother to similarly coiffed Craig Sheffer, plays the dumb, revengeful antagonist. He has been pulled directly from the "Bad Guy's Handbook". He does the typical things that a bad guy does. He kills people in his way, he treats his woman badly, he chases the protagonist in a car chase then disappears, he kills something that's near and dear to the protagonist and his family and he also has his over the top moment at the end of the movie revealing all his motives and his hate. Of course, Stephen Dorff is a generic actor whose body of work I never really liked from the beginning (he even made character Deacon Frost in Blade generic). And there is Juliette Lewis, whom I think really has defiencies in the brain. She plays a woman who gets beaten by her boyfriend, he kills her sister and yet in the end, she goes to his grave to show her love (because he seems pretty good in the sack). I mean, in every movie from Kalifornia to Natural Born Killers to Strange Days, she appears to be a dimwit in her role. Nothing changes here. Maybe Figgis owed her a favor and put her in this role out of sympathy because she no reason for existing.

Anyway, this movie is a bust, even with it's favorable cast and director. If you want suspense, wait for the anticipated Mystic River and save your hard earned dough...Rating: C-

If you ever had any intention of seeing this movie, it is my hope that I can be the one to assure that you don't. I'll be giving away every secret of the plot in order to seal this act. Of course, the movie itself gives everything away in the first ten minutes simply by existing. Cold Creek Manor insults its audience by thinking that it is ahead of us when it is so cliched that every incident is easily predicted, and often foreshadowed, often up to an hour in advance. When they are presented as surprises, you'll be wondering why, since you knew that (whatever) was going to happen long before.

After an accident that lets them know that New York City is a dangerous place to live (but could have happened anywhere people are impatient with vehicles), Cooper and Leah Tilson (Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone) buy an old mansion with a past out in the country. The locals sit around the local diner mumbling about the house but, of course, only telling the Tilsons what they need to know in order to advance the plot.

Just as they are settling in, who shows up but the former owner of Cold Creek Manor (he was in prison, missed some payments, and the bank foreclosed, allowing the Tilsons to buy cheap), Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), whose family had owned the house for generations. Now, the first clue that this guy isn't to be trusted is his family: where are they? If he was in prison, the wife could make payments, right? Oh, but not if ... but, see, you've already figured it out. The Tilsons don't, however, and hire Massie to help restore the old house, while he rummages through his old stuff that was sold with the house, including a display of skull hammers and some nudie pictures of the wife, along with photos of the many generations of Massies that Cooper, a documentarian, is using to make a film about the house.

Still with me? Strange things start to happen, like poisonous snakes appearing in beds and on floors, causing the family to race up to the roof and call Dale to get them out, making him a hero in the eyes of the kids. Luckily, because Dennis Quaid is a pretty smart guy, his character figures out that Dale put the snakes in the house. Unfortunately, due to some poor career choices that have numbed her brain, Sharon Stone's character does not believe him and ends up with Juliette Lewis screaming at her, a fate I would wish on no one.

Some thriller conventions just leap out, like a skylight/stained glass combination that serves no purpose but just screams to be fallen through. And characters that serve mainly to give information so they can be killed. The only bright spot in this is we get to see Christopher Plummer have a lot of fun as Massie Senior, an old, belligerent, senile man in a nursing home who has a thing for chocolate-covered cherries. The kids are all right, too, especially Jesse's (Ryan Wilson) earnest delivery of that laughable poetry. (Kristen Stewart from Panic Room plays the daughter and was nominated for Young Artist Awards for both films.)

I could go on, but I don't really want to spend any more time discussing this insulting piece of cinematic waste. Mike Figgis (who made Leaving Las Vegas, so we know he can make a decent film) should be ashamed of making this film (the extras on the DVD seem to say that he is quite proud of it) and Richard Jeffries should have his computer taken away from him for lack of originality. The most ironic moment comes when, in one of the DVD extras, which covers the "Rules of the Genre," Figgis points out that you must follow the rules while never allowing the audience to be ahead of the characters in the film. Editing was done in post-production to ensure that this would not happen.

The most fun we had watching Cold Creek Manor was high-fiving each other when our cliché predictions came true. Our hands were sore by the end, and so were we, having wasted our time and money on this.

Juliette Lewis...Sharon Stone...Stephen Dorff..It should have been called COLD CAREER MANOR...especially when they appear in things like this....

For anyone who has explored the thriller genre to any extent, the premise behind Cold Creek Manor will be familiar territory. A family moves to an idyllic country home in search of a peaceful life. A charismatic, vaguely suspicious character unexpectedly enters their lives. Through a series of gradually building incidents, they come to realize that the stranger is actually a homicidal maniac. Tensions between the two sides escalate, and the family is finally forced to confront the stranger in a kill-or-be-killed battle.

Cold Creek Manor doesn't fail just because it tells a story that has already been told many times. (A movie can succeed with a familiar plotline if it addresses the old story from an innovative angle.) Cold Creek Manor fails because there are simply too many credibility gaps in the movie's plot. As a result, the viewer is never able to completely suspend his or her disbelief.

As I watched the movie, I found myself thinking again and again: No reasonably intelligent person would take these actions under these circumstances. In several scenes, Dennis Quaid's analytical, timid main character takes actions that are incongruently foolhardy. Moreover, there a number of places where the cause-and-effect relationships simply don't add up. (I can't be more specific without adding spoilers; but you'll recognize them if you watch the film.) For example, there is one scene where the killer has a clear chance to finish off the main characters, but he inexplicably fails to take advantage of the opportunity, in what is an obvious and artificial means of extending the action.

Cold Creek Manor is also an odd mishmash of genres. The first part of the movie dwells on the sinister, gothic atmosphere of the house, leading the viewer to think that Cold Creek Manor is going to be a haunted house story of some sort. However, the atmospheric elements of the house are immaterial to the final evolution of the plot. I ultimately wondered why the director went to so much trouble to foreshadow the occult at the beginning of the film.

The bright points of Cold Creek Manor are the actors. Stephen Dorff is especially skillful in his portrayal of the tough-yet-clever villain. Juliette Lewis also does a commendable job as the abused girlfriend who doesn't want to see the dark side of her love interest.

I can't help thinking that there was a potential for a good movie here. However, Cold Creek Manor is far too loosely plotted to rate more than two stars, despite the competent efforts of the actors involved.

I really wanted this to be a great movie. I was soooo looking forward to it. I counted the days till it was released.
Well, the only thing scary about it was my devotion to it.
My devotion was not completely wasted. I did get to see Sharon on screen again. That was worth it, but nothing else was.
Like everyone else has said, forshadowing was the key force in the movie. Everything that was going to happen was handed to you on a silver platter many scenes before it did. Not only was everything foretold, most of the story was completely unbelievable anyway.
First off, there is this huge run down mansion out in the country. It comes with 1200 acres and all the contents of the house, which include numerous antiques and personal family momentos. It comes with a pool, horse stalls and what appears to be a guest house. The house is in move in condition, but requires a bit of work. They buy all of this for $210,000. WHAT? In New York? I don't think so. It is also unbelievable that they would move from their affluent New York life to become hillbillies. Well, maybe a little bit believable, but not very. They also move to a place that seems to be millions of miles away from New York. Everyone there acts like this is the first time they have seen big city people.
When you first see the house and its interior, it is obvious that it was a showplace. It is obvious that whoever lived there had money and knew how to spend and show it. It is obvious that the family from which the house came was affluent.
You then meet the last person to live in the house from the family and it is obvious that they were white trash. They were people who would have lived in metal trailer houses with tin foil over the windows. The house and the family do not match each other. The house and the family are soooo mismatched it is almost ridiculous. You are then given the idea that the others homes and land in the area are very similar to this one. Then you see the people who live in this area and they are just as much white trash as the Massey family. It just does not add up.
The scene where there are snakes taking over the house is so overdone. Most of the snakes look like Boas. Since when do Boas run wild in New York? They even have a rattlesnake. ummm, did someone make a trip down south just to collect some snakes for this?
I feel like I am rambling on now, but I just don't know how to get out everything in this movie that does not make sense.
Another thing that does not work is the music. The music makes you feel like you are watching some crime thriller from the past. It does not work with this movie at all.
There are also a few scenes that could have been scary, but they just let them float into nothing.
The acting is split. Dennis Quaid is horrible. Sharon Stone is wonderful. The kids are good. Stephen Dorf (sp?) is questionable. He does look good walking around with no shirt, but beyond that, it is a toss up.

If you really want to watch the movie, then by all means do, as I know that none of the bad reviews kept me from watching it. But just be warned that this is one time that the reviews are right on.