Cold Creek Manor
By Sarah Chacko and Jessica Sanders
News Editors

If you’re craving a scary movie to royally freak you out, take a trip to Blockbuster because along with all the other crap that they’re dishing out in the theater this fall, Cold Creek Manor is another big steaming pile.

This movie begs the question: What if they made a suspense-thriller but forgot the plot twists? Just when you think something is going to happen in the plot, it does. And really, that is the most unusual thing about the film.
“Cold Creek Manor,” starring Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid, is true to all the worn-out clichés as it depicts the tale of a family being terrorized by a madman.

The movie starts out in the city with the stereotypical hustle and bustle lifestyle that drives everyone into the country. Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid) and his wife Leah (Sharon Stone) quit their jobs, leave their spectacularly spacious townhouse and move their family to the peace and quiet of Cold Creek Manor, formerly a sheep farm.

Almost immediately the audience can pick up a weird vibe from townspeople who think the Tilson’s don’t belong there and definitely not in Cold Creek Manor. The mansion itself looks as though the owners woke up one day and just walked out of the house. Sheets were still on the beds, clothes in the closets and heaps of family pictures and records. The perfect setting for an elaborate, sinister plot involving decades of dark, hidden secrets.

But no.

Soon after moving into the house, Dale Massey (Stephen Dorff), the previous owner, shows up after being released from prison. His shabby appearance and criminal record don’t stand in the way of Cooper hiring him to help with the house. The awkwardness of the situation only builds until Cooper and Dale are enemies.

From here to the end of the movie, every possible instance for a plot twist is ignored and the most conceivable storyline is carried out. The family history that Cooper works so hard to piece together is meaningless. The overplayed trashy role by Juliette Lewis as “Ruby,” the ramblings of Dale’s senile grandfather, and the vacant interest of the town sheriff, like most of the characters introduced, lead nowhere in the overall scheme of things. Dale, an obvious candidate for the villain, is too high strung for the avid pot smoker they make him out to be. Dialogue between characters was weak and the elements of foreshadowing and foreboding are straight from Scary Movie: 101.

When the beloved family pet, a pony, dies and Cooper is suspected to have killed it, he promises his daughter that nothing is further from the truth and that he will protect their family from harm.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” I’ve heard it all before, Coop.

Even as the climax builds towards the end, when you think it’ll get good, it only gets worse. The lights go out and the guy sitting next to us says, “I think I’ve seen something like this before.” Yes, my friend, you have. Dale breaks through a window and starts smashing everything, which, for the most part, is his own stuff. He calls out to Cooper and Leah, like all good psychos do, as if they’d come running to his side. After chasing them upstairs, the movie took the feel of a less scary “Shining” as Dale broke down the door with a sheep-killing hammer. Scared yet?

We weren’t either.

After a mildly violent fight on the roof in the driving rain, good finally triumphs evil, and the Tilson’s decide to stay at Cold Creek Manor as Ruby, the town skank, lays a single red rose on Dale’s grave. They just should have taken Dale out in a field five scenes earlier and shot him or, at the very least, beat him to a bloody pulp.

There were plenty of chances to save this movie and make the plot really twisted and creepy, but those chances just turned into forgotten dead ends. For example, Cooper finds some pictures of the family that lived in the house before, including icky naked photos of the wife. Promotional material for the movie suggests these pictures are integral to the plot, but I guess the promotions people didn’t actually watch the film, because this subplot doesn’t go anywhere. Cooper’s son Jesse begins wearing Dale’s son’s clothes and chanting strange things like “hammer head will crush your skull and throw you down the devil’s throat.” If they weren’t going to do something with this subplot, they at least should have sought counseling for the poor kid.

Even the casting was predictable with all of the characters in their regular typecast roles. Quaid was the good guy, Dorff played the bad guy, Stone was the woman everyone wanted to sleep with, and Lewis was the woman everyone had already slept with. Predictable ... almost as if someone used a “suspense-thriller template.”

If your idea of a chilling film is watching a guy chase yuppies around with a sheep-killing hammer, then this may be the movie for you. Otherwise, you might want to make it a Blockbuster night.