Cold Creek Manor

Rating:
Summary: "Cold Creek Yawner"
Review: This is one of the worst movies of 2003. A documentary filmmaker (Dennis Quaid) and his wife (Sharon Stone) move to an old, rusty house with a suspicious past. "Cold Creek Manor" is the name of the house, how special! A con man (Stephen Dorff) murdered some people and well, the house isn't haunted. Damn! The movie plays like "Cape Fear" and other really bad movies. Always predictable and ultimately ennui. In the movie theater, I fell asleep for a while and when I woke up during the "thrilling" moments, I wished I went back to sleep. Come on now, snakes in the house were chasing the family up to the roof. A horse is found in the pool. Cool, now the pool has a Hawaiian Punch color to it! And of course the only stained glass in the house plays a major role in the movie as the ex-owner of the home crashes through it. Why didn't I get my money back you ask? Well, it helped me get some needed sleep. It's one of the most boring "thrillers" ever made. Yawn.

Rating:
Summary: So awful it's scary...
Review: When the screen careers of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were on the slide in the early 1960s, the veteran Oscar winners turned to horror films to revitalize their dimming stars and introduce them to a new audience. The strategy worked -- sort of.
Their collaboration "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" was a solid box office success that brought the women renewed attention from Hollywood.
Unfortunately, the film also transformed them into kitschy icons, suitable for over-the-top, scenery-chewing roles, but little else.
Ten years ago, no one would have guessed that mega-bombshell Sharon Stone would one day be looking for a good thriller to reinvigorate her moribund career. But now the icy blonde mantrap of "Basic Instinct" can be found running for her life -- and running through a gallery of grotesque expressions that would do Crawford proud -- in "Cold Creek Manor," a miserable melodrama in which a family flees the scary streets of the Big Apple for a more relaxing life in upstate New York.
Instead, they find evil -- really, they do: Daughter Kristen (Kristen Stewart) goes off into the woods and discovers a wooden plank with EVIL written on it in big black letters. Them country-folk sure is plain-spoken.
Roaring down the highway to high camp, Stone strides across the screen as Leah Tilson, some sort of executive who capriciously gives up her job in order to spend more time with husband Cooper (Dennis Quaid), a documentary filmmaker she's apparently been funding for many years, and their kids. The Tilsons venture into bucolic Bellingham and pay $210,000 for a ramshackle old estate known as Cold Creek Manor, the sort of dust-covered dump in which you might expect to bump into Edward Scissorhands.
Instead, the Tilsons have the lousy luck to bump into Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), the deranged former owner, who just got back from a three-year-stay in prison. He pretends to be interested in helping the family patch the place up; the audience, and anyone else with more than two functioning brain cells, knows he has other motives.
Absolutely nothing happens in "Cold Creek Manor" that you haven't seen dozens of times before in those cheapjack USA Network shockers. A surprise invasion of snakes forces everyone to run around in hysterics for a good five minutes, and Quaid and Stone look utterly ridiculous when they scream, a major debit in a movie of this type. Dale sleeps with and slaps around all-knowing bartender/gas station attendant Ruby (Juliette Lewis), who appears to be the product of a one-night-stand between Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and a Garbage Pail Kid. Things begin turning up in the Tilsons' swimming pool that are almost as shocking as the infamous Baby Ruth bar from "Caddyshack."
Not for a moment is any of this scary or surprising; only Declan Quinn's smooth cinematography gives it any kind of pedigree. It's depressing to note that "Cold Creek Manor" is the work of director Mike Figgis ("Leaving Las Vegas," "Internal Affairs"), who can usually be counted on to provide something worthwhile. Here, in addition to painfully nondescript direction, he provides an obnoxious musical score that lets the world know what a piano would sound like if it was strung out on crystal meth.
In one scene, an angry Ruby starts pushing the timid Leah around, but Figgis doesn't even let us have the cheap thrill of a Lewis/Stone catfight. True, it might not have been the equivalent of Joan and Bette's big brawl in "Baby Jane," but at least it would have been a sign of life in a movie that's otherwise comatose.

Rating:
Summary: My review on Cape Fear...OH WAIT, Cold Creek Manor.....
Review: THERE ARE MANY SIMILARITIES TO THIS FILM AND "CAPE FEAR" (1991). I mean, its basically just a stalker trying to frighten a poor family out of his old house. Sure, there are some differences here and there, but they aren't THAT many. From the previews of this film, you'd think that it would be about a haunted house or something. The previews were very misleading, and it was one of those occurances where the preview for the film was better than the film itself. It wasn't a HORRIBLE film. I mean, I stuck with it, and I actually found myself enjoying it at times, but after a while, it started to drag on. Sharon Stone wasn't that bad in her first film role in a while, and the rest of the cast was just as good. Juliette Lewis CAN play a very convincing redneck. If you do decide to see this, just watch it as a "popcorn flick" and don't look for any deep meaning or anything. The cinematography is awesome, by the way.

I guess I'd recommend it if there is nothing else, and I mean nothing, to see at the time. Just don't expect anything spectacular.

Rating:
Summary: You Will Be Pleased!
Review: I thought that this movie was one of the best movies of the year. It kept you on the edge of your seat because you didn't know what was going to happen next. At first it was kind of slow but at the same time it was really interesting. I strongly recommened this to any viewer who loves a good on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Awsum and Scary movie
Review: It was very very good to me. It was pretty scary but not toooo gory of grose. it was very good how they explained everything in the movie and how they laid it all out. my favorite part was when they showed the divils throat part it gets pretty interesting. It gave me the chills on some-ALL of the parts lol :) but im just a chicken. I really think you should wach cold creek manor.

Rating:
Summary: TV movie of the week,not suitable for theaters
Review: Man this movie had a creepy name and it is what lured me in to say "let me check it out"....unfortunately the name "Cold Creek manor" was the only thing creepy about this movie.
3 good actors: Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, and Stephen Dorff, couldn't save this movie.
First off, they could've took this movie in a whole bunch of different areas.
1.they could have made it where as Dale Massie's family (Dorff) in which he killed was haunting the big home (Cold Creek Manor) and Dennis Quaid's character was trying to get to the bottom of it to solve as well as protect his family.
2.They could have made it that while doing a documentary on Cold Creek Manor he stumbles upon some evidence of a murder and his documentary actually turns into a unsolved mystery that he solves.
3.They could have made it where as Dorff's character wants to get back into the home to finish cleaning up unscene murder evidence for the killing he did of his family years before and tries by any means necessary to get them out...even murdering them.....instead of doing these possible alternatives, the movie goes on and on with just talking, talking, and more talking, and showing how menacing Stephen Dorffs character could be,snuffing out his pops, giving his girl (julette lewis...what happened to her career??)an unnecessary beatdown at the bar and the movie eventually turning into one of those movies you've seen on Lifetime or the TV movie of the week. No suspense...too predictable to be suspensful.
I am still trying to wonder why they were giving Stephen Dorffs' character ALOT of screen time with his shirt off...it really wasn't necessary other than to show that he's grown up plentifully since "The GATE" and that he's working out. It will be movies like this why he will never get that special movie role to put him on the map.
When the climax of the movie is in the "middle part" of the movie in a whole bunch of snakes around the house for thrilling and suspense then you know this has got to be bad. This movie obviously bombed at the theater, wait for it to come on cable.

Rating:
Summary: What's this?
Review: Oh me goodness! "Worst movie ever" is too nice to call this thing! A waste of money and time! (Good thing I paid only $2.50 to see it!) Avoid this movie at all costs is all I have to say. Who ever made this movie should vanish from planet earth, and who ever decided to put it into theaters should be tortured to death, or at least until they vanish too. What can I say, when I was with my sister, watching this piece of you-know-what, I thought 4 hours had passed! (And that was only half way through the damned thing!) Also, the 'suspense' music was horrible. (When that scene with the snakes started, me and my sister couldn't stop laughing! There were only 4 snakes in the house, and they all started screaming like babies [even the father!]) Now, I usually find something good about movies I watch, but I won't even try that with this one. Bottom line: waste of money; waste of time.

-Ater

Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: The previews for COLD CREEK MANOR are inticing. They portray the film as being a spooky, haunted house film or possibly a sly thriller. Unforunately, the coming attractions are better than the actual film.

COLD CREEK MANOR is neither a haunted house movie, a ghost movie, or a sly thriller. It comes closest to being a thriller, though it's not a thriller either. It's simply a character profile hodge-podge devoid of meaning. Watching the film I felt bad for the actors because there is no coherence in the movie. I thought that perhaps either the writers butchered the script through rewrites or that maybe there was a freshman editor that the director trusted so much that he let him rip his film to shreds, without his knowledge. However, the more probable case is that this movie was a mesh of nothing all along.

Anyway, the film starts off interesting enough developing the relationship between Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and his family and displaying the reason they wish to leave New York. Things seem okay after the move into their new home in the country. Then the villian shows up and the film goes downhill. A sense of suspense tapers off once the bad guy is hired as a handy man and after the snakes show up, all suspense dies. Nothing makes sense from that point on and another movie is born, totally dissected from the first, except the same characters and actors are still around. What follows is a hodge-podge of nonsensical images and horror movie formulas that don't stay true to form. That's not even mentioning all the plot holes.

Overall, the only reason worth seeing this movie is to see Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone. The only reason I gave this film 2 stars instead of 1 is because I really like Dennis Quaid. However, if you don't like either Dennis Quaid or Sharon Stone, ignore this movie altogether.

Rating:
Summary: perfect
Review: really cool movie. i loved it. it was a cool movie in the best sense. a great thriller. a couple moves into a house. the old owner is a psycho. he wants his house back. he decides to kill the family. well it was fun.

Rating:
Summary: HOOORRIBLE
Review: OH NO! Snakes in all the right places-How SCARY! NO, NO, NO, oh my GOSH! it is a dead horse in the pool, I would have never guessed it. I can not say enough bad things about this movie. A thriller without thrill, a suspense without suspense, a mystery with no mystery at all, and the most predictable movie to date. Horrible, terrible acting (Dennis what happened?). Does anybody really want to see a suspense/mystery movie where the perpetrator is easily known within the first 15 minutes of the film? Hmm...I'm gonna have to say no on this one. It is bad enough that theaters charge an arm and a leg to see the movie, but it is even worse that they would let innocent people waste their money on movies like this. Please avoid this movie, it is for your own saftey.