The
trailer for this film made it look like "The Haunting Part
II" or something of that nature. We see a dead horse in
a swimming pool, papers mysteriously flying off a desk, and Sharon
Stone sleeping next to some creatures in her bed. Alas,
there is nothing supernatural about "Cold Creek Manor".
There are no ghosts, no ghouls, and very few chills and surprises.
The basic idea was simple -- take some well known and well
received actors, throw in an A-list director, and surely they can
make a mediocre script fly. Unfortunately, it does not turn
out quite like that.
Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone star as Cooper and Leah Tilson.
He is a documentary filmmaker and she works in business and they
both have a comfortable life in New York City; that is, until
their son Jesse (Ryan Wilson) is nearly killed in an automobile
accident. They then decide to pack up and move out to the
country, eventually purchasing a house and property known as Cold
Creek Manor. Things go good at first, until the old owner,
Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff) comes calling. What ensues is
scene after scene of Massie trying to scare the Tilsons out of the
house, and Cooper trying to discover what went so horribly wrong
in the house years before.
Director Mike Figgis is too talented a director to be messing with
screenplays like this. It is clichéd beyond belief and
offers nothing original. We have seen each one of these
scenes over and over a million times in various other thrillers,
and not even Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid can make then any more
tense. There is one scene in which Stone is flung into a
deep dark well, obviously ripping off the sequence from "The
Ring". And, in another scene, Dorff tries to chase
Quaid down in his truck, an obvious rip-off from -- let's see --
every other thriller ever made.
Stephen Dorff delivers the best performance in this film, at
first. For the first half of the film, we really cannot
understand him, and see him as a complex individual with the
propensity for both good and evil. By the end of the film,
he has been reduced to the stereotypical raving madman who must,
of course, tell the people what he is going to do to them before
he actually does it, giving them more time to develop a way out of
the situation. There is one obvious scene where Dorff
watches Quaid pull his wife out of the well. It seems to me
that would have been the perfect time to end it -- push him down
the well with her and leave them there to rot. But, no.
He could not do that. He had to draw it out and lead up to
the finale on the roof.
Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid are wasted in this film, and that is
a shame because his clout was just rising and Stone has not been
in a picture in a couple of years. I don't know what
possessed her to make her comeback with this. And Juliette
Lewis -- has she been reduced to meaningless supporting roles?
Has everyone forgotten about how great an actress she really is?
What about "Natural Born Killers" and "Cape
Fear"?
"Cold Creek Manor" has only one redeeming scene, in
which the entire family comes face to face with some uninvited
woodland creatures throughout their house. That sequence has
its share of jumps and chills. Otherwise, this is the same
old thriller that came out last year and the year before.
Don't let the A-list actors fool you -- "Cold Creek
Manor" is a cold duck.
