Cape Fear Called; It Wants Its Plot Back

By Fearless Young Orphan Cold Creek Manor (2003) Directed by

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 (), 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 ). 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 ) 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 ( 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. Snakes, detested as they often are, really rather like to keep to themselves, and would probably prefer hiding in the darkest corner they can find. Not so here. These snakes that wisely divide up, assign themselves one Tilson apiece, and set about attacking. More snakes are strategically poised at all points of escape. Once the Tilsons realize they are plagued by snakes, instead of quietly leaving the house, they scream and crash about like lunatics until they emerge on the roof of the manor house. What a bunch of ninnies they are. Their behavior is not going to get any less idiotic.

Cooper figures it was Dale who put the snakes in the house and fires him . . .you know, once the snakes are out of the house. I hope Dale kept a careful count of how many snakes he dumped in their window, because GOD what a chore that must have been!

Once fired, Dale begins to openly deride the Tilsons in public places. Or, I guess in just one public place, because this town has exactly one business that we ever see: it serves as grocery store, diner, bar, pool hall and gas station. Anyway Dale raises a few ruckuses in town, about how the Tilsons stole the property out from under him. He seems to have the townspeople’s’ sympathies, but I don’t understand why. There seems to be little reason for the Massie family to be loved in that town. The elder Mr. Massie is considered an “asshole” and Dale himself is a violent mess, and why the town would prefer his presence over that of the affluent, harmless Tilson family is a mystery, especially since Dale attacks nearly everyone he meets. This is another movie construct, though: the small-town folk have to mistrust the big-city folk, but the filmmakers forgot to provide us with a valid reason.

We’re stuck now with a really tedious grind to the end of the movie. Leah has to become suspicious of her husband’s behavior, though her doing so is outlandish in this context. (She is angry at Cooper because of the menace that Dale Massie is obviously being, as if Cooper is somehow more at fault than anyone else.) Daughter Kristen’s adorable pony has to fetch up dead. Wife and kiddies must go back to the city where it’s safe, because Cooper figures out that Dale is a murderer.

I have a bit of a complaint about how clues are discovered in this movie. Twice, the Tilson family discovers major clues by simply looking down. This is a big estate they’re living on. Playing in the woods, Kristen just happens to stumble across the nearly invisibly well; just staring into space on the driveway, Cooper happens to look down and find the broken dental retainer of the little Massie girl. It still has some of her teeth attached to it. Or, senile old Mr. Massie just happens to babble exactly the information Cooper needs to know. Or, little Jesse just happens to find a coloring book produced by the previous little boy in residence, chock full of ominous clues. These people have tremendous luck with finding and learning things. Never mind trying to figure out how the retainer and the teeth managed to get out of the little girl’s head and onto the driveway. Let’s just keep in mind that Dale is a very sloppy villain.

Now alone at the house, Cooper is going to search for the bodies of the murdered Massie family. He thinks they are probably in the well, called the Devil’s Throat (the one that his daughter accidentally found). Since a storm is coming and the phone lines are out (of course . . . climaxes of these movies always come during a storm when the phone lines are out) Leah comes back to the manor house to tell Cooper where the well is, because I guess daughter Kristen marked the latitude and longitude on a GPS or something. Anyway Leah and Cooper are together on the property, and they take Cooper’s fancy-schmancy camera equipment out to investigate this well.

It’s a miserable hole in the ground, not so much an actual well, but anyway Leah and Cooper lower his water-proof, night vision camera down there and sure enough there are bodies at the bottom. Nasty! Now they have the proof they need to convict Dale Massie. Dale Massie, in the meantime, has stolen the sheriff’s walkie-talkie, through which the sheriff was keeping contact with Cooper. Dale pitches his voice up high like a girl-sheriff would sound, and lures Cooper down to the road. Then Dale sneaks up behind Leah and pushes her into the well. Now Dale proves to us that he is the dumbest criminal ever. Leah is properly down the well. Cooper comes running back, leans over the edge, shouts back and forth with his wife, throws a rope down there, is absolutely unhelpful in getting her out (because watch: she actually climbs the vines, not the rope). This entire time, as Cooper is precariously balanced over this well, does Dale ever think to just freaking push Cooper in there too? No he does not. He lets Cooper guide Leah out of the well. Dale has gone back to the house, for some reason.

And so what does the Tilson couple do? They go back to the house too. Well of course they do. Because why should they start now to make rational decisions about their safety? They go back to the house; they discover (omigod!) that Dale is also in the house, and so instead of leaving the house, they go further into the house. WHY? Because they have to push Dale’s dumb ass through the skylight so he can crash through that stained glass window I told you about. The entire standoff, by the way, when Dale announces his craziness, is just an excruciating finish.

Oh dear, what a mess this has been. But my analysis is simple enough. The makers of Cold Creek Manor took a bunch of ideas from family-in-danger movies and threw them into the mix, not bothering to confirm whether the ideas fit together in this context. Here is just one example of this problem: How does a country manor house, which is only one generation down from its loss of wealth, produce a trashy, unmannered sweaty punk like Dale Massie? He doesn’t even fit with his own history. This movie is a dull and nonsensical tour down a well-worn path, without the sense to even play fair with its clichés.

But anyway, the point is that the Tilsons kill Dale and move the family back into the manor house, and I guess everything’s fine now, until the divorce papers come through. Did I mention that the Tilsons don’t really like each other very much? When they have to sell that big old house, it could be a funny story, like The War of the Roses, or The Money Pit. The real question is: Does Kristen get another pony? And I’m sorry, folks. We just don’t know.