Cold Creek Manor (2003) Directed by Mike Figgis
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Cape Fear Called; It Wants Its Plot Back By Fearless Young Orphan Cold Creek Manor (2003) Directed by Mike Figgis For perhaps half an hour, Cold Creek Manor might have you believing it is an atmospheric thriller. But don’t get your hopes up. We begin with the Tilson family in New York City. There is the father, Cooper This is the Spanish poster for the Tilson (Dennis Quaid), a documentary filmmaker. movie, but I liked that they just called it Mother, Leah Tilson (Sharon Stone), is a successful the “THE HOUSE” Also, look at Sharon’s face. I felt exactly the same way. businesswoman on the fast track to a vice presidency with her company (providing she’ll sleep with the boss, oops). They have a son and daughter, little Jesse and young teen Kristen (who is played by a sullen Kristen Stewart). On a particularly hectic morning, Jesse is hit by a car, and narrowly escapes serious injury. This prompts the family to believe they should get out of the city and go “someplace safe.” In my experience, films treat these moves to quiet little towns in two different ways. In a comedy or a romance, a move to a quiet little town is the catalyst for life-affirming changes in the characters, as they learn to 1) stop and smell the roses, 2) appreciate the little things, 3) get back to old-fashioned values like neighborliness and loyalty. But in a thriller, a move to a small town is the guaranteed recipe for disaster. These people always think they are escaping the perils of city life, only to discover a greater peril waiting in their expansive new backyards. Such is the case with the Tilsons, because they bought Cold Creek Manor on the cheap in a foreclosure sale, and they forgot to ask about the previous owner, and whether the previous owner was particularly happy with the arrangement. At least the Tilsons get to settle in first. They ease into their new country life with your standard movie problems: the small town folk don’t like newcomers, and daughter Kristen is mad about leaving the city. The small town folk never stop being a problem, but Kristen’s attitude is fixed with the gift of a new pony, which just goes to show you that buying your kids things is the way to secure docile compliance. As for the rest of the family, little Jesse likes living in the country as all young boys must, and Cooper and Leah seem to be all right with their new lifestyle. Their marriage is rather a strange one, as movies go. Usually your move-to-the-country thriller will show a couple getting a renewed sexy charge to their marriage, like this is just what they needed. But I never got the impression that Cooper and Leah even like each other very much, regardless of where they are. They snap and bark and yell at each other, or ignore each other, and the clean country air does little to change this. They don’t have any For example, in this hilarious scenes alone unless the object is 1) she suspects him of comedy, a move to a small town produces zany but life-affirming troublemaking or 2) she is confessing that she damn near results, and almost no one dies in cheated on him to get a promotion. So this is problem a well. number one: We don’t like the Tilsons. They’re obnoxious, self-centered people who have no admirable traits that we can see. They are obviously in trouble: the ominous mood of the film has informed us of this. But we are not invested in their trouble. They bought this manor house, which looks bigger and more elaborate every time we see it, with most of its furnishings and junk still inside. It is full of the personal effects of the Massie family, who built it decades ago and had lived in it since then, which is why it includes the Massie family cemetery in the back yard. Charming. We have to assume the Massies were wealthy once, but fell onto hard times because, after all, the bank was foreclosing on the place so it must have been remortgaged or used as collateral. I think what happened is that they were sheep farmers and their entire stock of 10,000 sheep all had to be killed when they contracted hoof and mouth disease, and thus the family was ruined. Remember, Cooper is a documentary filmmaker. He goes through a lot of the Massies’ junk and decides, for reasons completely unknown to me, to make a documentary about the Massie family. I don’t know why he thinks they’re interesting; the only thing he seems really interested in are the naked pictures he finds of the woman who lived there just a few short years ago. That’s Dale Massie’s wife. Dale and she, and their two kids, lived here until rather recently. As the story goes, wife and kids left Dale and ran off to parts unknown; shortly thereafter Dale was convicted of manslaughter for a car accident and went to prison for three years. And then the bank foreclosed. The fact that Cooper Tilson is making a documentary about the Massies is rather an extraneous point. The only reason his job is even important is that it provides him with some nice camera equipment that will come into play later. He does go to interview the oldest living Massie (that being Dale’s senile, abusive father, played by an unrecognizable Christopher Plummer) in the retirement home, but I don’t know why he thinks that, or any of this, is a worthy subject for a film. If he has discovered anything fascinating about the Massies, he sure doesn’t clue us in on it. As far as we know, they are just an ordinary family that lost their home, but Cooper archives, and films, and scowls as if he’s on to some great mystery. This is the next problem. Cooper seems to be aware that there is trouble brewing in this house’s history before he has any right to suspect it. It’s like the guy knows he’s in a movie. Hell, when he and his family are first looking through this manor house, they happen upon strangely constructed atrium, with a skylight that falls to a lovely stained glass ceiling, running straight through the middle of the house. Cooper might as well just say, “And here is the glass ceiling through which someone is going to fall by the end of this film.” Naturally Dale Massie shows up, freshly released from prison and played by Stephen Dorff. His agenda is to barge in on the Tilsons, tell them everything is fine, offer to work for them to restore the house, and then spend the next hour of the movie strutting around showing off his sweaty naked torso. He helps the Tilsons get the pool running, and everybody sure likes a pool. Then the next item on the agenda is to get the Tilsons out of his house. And thus arises the third problem: Dale Massie and his ever-morphing motivation. He wants the Tilsons out of his house, but spends considerable time making sure the place is nice and that they love it there. I suppose you could argue that he wants to fix it up on Cooper Tilson’s dime and then drive them away. Then, you first suppose he wants to drive them away so he can have his family’s property back, but then it seems he wants to drive them away because he doesn’t want them to find the bodies of his murdered family. Yes, when his wife threatened to leave him, Dale murdered her and the two children and dropped their bodies down a well. Nobody suspected this until Dale showed up again, making a big ruckus about the property and pointing out all sorts of clues. If he had just left the Tilsons alone, he would have probably gotten away scot-free. Dale eventually tries to resolve all his damn problems by going on a violent spree that involves beating his girlfriend (Juliette Lewis in poor-white-trash mode) in front of most of the town, the murder of his father, an assault on the town sheriff, and full-scale attack on the Tilsons. Exactly how does he think this is going to help his cause? I think somebody in the production of this film must have anticipated the problems with Dale’s behavior because Dale will offer this explanation in the last five minutes: “I’m crazy.” Uh- huh. I’m not sure truly crazy people know that they’re crazy, unless he means “crazy” like a party animal, and yeah, that I can believe. Dale knows how to have a good time. I got a bit ahead of the plot, sorry. I couldn’t help it; Dale is a very confusing villain. The first act of villainy performed by Dale is to fill the Tilson’s new home with snakes, some poisonous. You have to admire this kind of prank, simply for the work involved. Dale had to go out and get a bunch of snakes first, you see, then get them into the manor, and then of course get them out of the manor again the next day after the family has had a good scare. Dale made great selection in the snakes, too, because he chose the most aggressive, intelligent snakes ever.