Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Derivative stalker in a mansion movie, 5 April 2009
This movie smells of class, with a decent cast (Sharon Stone, Dennis Quaid) and respected `character' director, Mike Figgis. So what went wrong..? The result is not exactly a mess, it's clearly carefully crafted.. but carefully crafted into something that is simply not exciting, and manages to squander the moments of occasional suspense that do build up. A fatal flaw in a movie that lies in the stalker / thriller genre.
Dennis Quaid, his wife Sharon Stone, and their young son and daughter, uproot from the city to find a quieter safer life for their family. They buy a run down manor, which still has the possessions from the original owners. Then one of those former residents turns up - recently released from jail - and he wants to help in the house renovations.... Of course, things start to go south, tensions mount, and the history of the house threatens to engulf the new owners.
There are some nice scenes with the cast, including Christopher Plummer almost unrecognizable as a curmudgeonly old foul mouthed man, and Juliette Lewis, as trailer trash girlfriend... however, the sum of the parts adds up to something less that it should. In fact, when the ending comes, you're liable to be happy for all the wrong reasons.
Not a disaster, but by no means a success either, this should appeal to genre enthusiasts only.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing special, but not altogether worthless, 24 Jul 2004
I agree with the previous reviewer on a number of points, but not with his overall evaluation of "Cold Creek Manor":
(a) The story line is conventional and predictable. The 'false leads', a prime convention of the genre, are there, but they remain perfunctory and never succeed in creating 'alternative plots': the Pinskis appear suspicious in their normality, but their story is never developed. Even the guilty man himself fails to appear ambiguous, despite all the efforts.
(b) I also agree that for a film called after a house, you would expect the house to be a character in its own right. Again, there are gestures towards this direction, but they remain unvindicated. Nothing indeed derives from the house itself in terms of plot or theme. If one remembers the Shining, one sighs with exasperation.
The film, however, is saved by two things: first, the excellent performances by Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone, and, of course their young co-stars. Second, the fine metacinematical invention of a protagonist being a director himself, even if this had a lot of potential which remained untapped into.
Overall, "Cold Creek Manor" is nothing special, but it not overall worthless.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
cold creek manor, 21 Jul 2004
Cold creek manor is the best thing to watch if you have trouble getting off to sleep. I guarantee you will be in the land of nod before you are halfway through this offering. The write-up on the box sounds too good to be true, 'an edge of your seat thriller' it most certainly is not, with descriptions about the manor house 'giving up its secrets' a total misleading quote as the storyline centres on a previous resident who is found out about killing his family, which not one single clue to this revelation comes from 'the house'. The movie reminds me of a 'made for tv' film as it keeps fading to black, with the watcher expecting adverts to appear, and the soundtrack just keeps repeating a 3 second guitar riff (which sounds like it could have lifted from the Biggles soundtrack)at what the film makers deem to be 'tense' moments. A real time waster.
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