Cold Creek Manor
Steve Peto takes a look at Cold Creek Manor starring Dennis Quiad and Sharon Stone in the hope that he finds a good thriller that thrills instead of spills.
Movie
Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quiad), his wife leah (Sharon Stone) and their two children live smack bang in the middle of New York City. Leah is an executive with a company and Cooper makes documentaries for a living. Life is fairly fast paced and hectic. After a minor accident involving one of the children, they decide enough is enough and they move out of the big bad city out into the idyllic countryside, they find a dilapidated old manor house and decide that they want to make it their dream home, so they move in.
In the house they find all sorts of memorabilia from the previous owners including photographs and videos, Cooper being a documentary maker decides to develop a timeline of the previous family with the information that he has found in the house. After a short while Dale Massie enters the scene, and for some reason Cooper offers him a job. I personally have a problem with the film at this point, the whole situation of how they come to meet Dale would set alarms bells ringing in my head, even Cooper and Leah are looking concerned about finding a stranger in their house, yet they offer the man a job.
After a while Cooper has his suspicions that all is not well with Dale and Dale leaves the job, this sets off massie's insanity and he begins to target them. This is pretty much the basis for the rest of the film, all the way up to its (anti) climax. Quiad and Stone's characters are wooden and don't convince, their characters make bad decisions on a regular basis and add little in the way of credibility to this movie. Stephen Dorff plays a mediocre bad guy, but the audience will "know" he is the bad guy of the film as soon as they see him, which spoils any attempt at suspense later in the film, his physique being his best contribution to the movie.
The setting of the film and the read up of the back could have been made into a really good film, however it was not to be, it is very slow to take off, and when it does, it doesn't get far off the ground before crashing down, the acting is lame for the most part and one dimensional, there are no "make you jump" surprises and certainly no thrill in this alleged thriller.
Whilst not being a complete turkey of a movie, it didn't really do it for me, too slow, too predictable and not enough thrill for a thriller, the highlight of the movies is Christopher Plummer as Dale's mean cherry chocolate eating daddy, and the star of the movie is the house, I would love to own it.
Picture
The picture was pretty good most of the time, although sometimes
the clarity could have been better in some areas, although that could
be an issue with my kit, the colour palette used was quite warm and
natural looking.
Sound
Sound was pretty standard and unobtrusive; use of the surround
sounds was quite sparse although there were some good effects that came
through them.
Extras
- "Cold Creek Manor: Cooper's Documentary" featurette (7:10)
- "Rules of the Genre" featurette (7:56)
- Introduction to Deleted Scenes (0:36)
- 7 Deleted Scenes: "Mrs. Tilson's Refreshments" - "The Snake
Catchers" (with Special Intro) - "A Trip to the Store" - "Last Rites" -
"Double Down" (with Special Intro) - "A Struggle at Devil's Throat" -
"The Staircase"
- Alternative Ending
- Bonus Trailers: - "Calendar Girls" - "Under the Tuscan Sun" - "Veronica Guerin"
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