Cold Creek Manor

Cold Creek Manor
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mike Figgis
Written by	Richard Jefferies
Produced by	Mike Figgis Annie Stewart
Starring	Dennis Quaid Sharon Stone Stephen Dorff Kristen Stewart Juliette Lewis & Christopher Plummer
Cinematography	Declan Quinn
Edited by	Dylan Tichenor
Music by	Mike Figgis
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date	September 19, 2003
Running time	118 minutes
Countries	United States Canada
Language	English
Box office	$29,119,434 (Worldwide)

Cold Creek Manor is a 2003 American/Canadian psychological thriller film directed by Mike Figgis. The screenplay by Richard Jefferies focuses on a family terrorized by the former owner of the rural estate they bought in foreclosure.

Plot

When documentary filmmaker Cooper Tilson and his business executive wife Leah decide life in New York City has become more than they can bear, they and their children Kristen and Jesse move into a decaying mansion filled with the possessions of the previous family. They befriend local tavern owners Ray and Ellen Pinski and their daughter Stephanie, who help them purchase a horse. As Cooper begins to sort through the many documents and family photographs scattered throughout the house, he decides to commit its history to film.

Converting the dilapidated building into their dream house becomes a living nightmare for the Tilsons when previous owner Dale Massie, an uncouth redneck recently released from prison, shows up and pressures Cooper into hiring him to help with the renovations. While he initially proves to be a good worker, the underlying sense of menace he projects is unsettling. A series of terrifying incidents lead the Tilsons to research the estate's dark and lurid past. Hoping to glean some details about its history, Cooper covertly visits Dale's aging and slightly demented father in the nursing home where he is living. Seemingly disjointed comments made by the elderly man lead Cooper to believe Dale murdered his wife and children, and he begins to search his 1,200-acre (4.9 km²) property for their remains. Sheriff Annie Ferguson, sister of Dale's battered, slatternly girlfriend Ruby, is skeptical about Dale's guilt, but slowly comes to realize Cooper may be right.

Cooper's suspicions are confirmed when he and Leah discover three skeletons in Devil's Throat, a deep well, hidden in the woods. Using the walkie talkie she gave him, he contacts Sheriff Ferguson, unaware she has been attacked and disabled by Dale, who punctures the tires on Cooper's truck and sets Leah's car on fire to prevent them from escaping. Trapping them in the house in the middle of a storm that has knocked out the electricity, he forces them to rely on their wits and physical prowess to save themselves. Pursuing the two through the mansion with a tool used for killing sheep; Dale finally corners Cooper and Leah on the roof. Cooper attempts to fight back but Dale retaliates by breaking one of Cooper's ribs. Dale, now raving mad, openly declares his insanity as well as his intent to kill them and throw them down the Devil's Throat like his family. However the couple are able to turn the tables on their tormentor by charging him with a crudely made tripline of rope that knocks him off his feet. They quickly tie him down against a roof lantern before he can break free.Cooper then takes the killing tool and taunts Dale as he had done to him, saying "Now get out of my house!", before shattering the skylight; sending the screaming Dale to his death onto the groundfloor below.

The film then cuts to show that the bodies of Dale's family are now rightly entombed in the family graveyard at Cold Creek Manor and that Cooper and his family have finally attained their want of peace. The final shot of the film shows the titular mansion now restored to its former glory.

Production

The film was shot on location in Cambridge, Kitchener, Ayr, and Toronto in Ontario.

The soundtrack includes "All My Ex's Live in Texas" by George Strait and "On the Road Again" by Canned Heat.

Cast

• Dennis Quaid as Cooper Tilson
• Sharon Stone as Leah Tilson
• Stephen Dorff as Dale Massie
• Juliette Lewis as Ruby Ferguson
• Kristen Stewart as Kristen Tilson
• Ryan Wilson as Jesse Tilson
• Dana Eskelson as Sheriff Annie Ferguson
• Christopher Plummer as Mr. Massie
• Simon Reynolds as Ray Pinski
• Kathleen Duborg as Ellen Pinski
• Paula Brancati as Stephanie Pinski
• Aidan Devine as Skip Linton
• Wayne Robson as Stan Holland
• Jordan Pettle as Declan
• Ray Paisley as Dink

Critical reception

Stephen Holden of the New York Times observed, "A serious filmmaker like Mike Figgis can be forgiven, I suppose, for slumming, when he's got a cast as stellar as the one that infuses the scream-by-numbers thriller Cold Creek Manor with more psychological credibility than its screenplay merits." He said the film "belongs to the Cape Fear tradition of thrillers in which the mettle of a civilized family man is tested in a life-or-death struggle with crude macho evil."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film 1½ stars and called it "an anthology of cliches" and "a thriller that thrills us only if we abandon all common sense." He added, "Of course preposterous things happen in all thrillers, but there must be at least a gesture in the direction of plausibility, or we lose patience."

Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "As haunted-house thrillers go, Cold Creek Manor is more ludicrous than the average but at the same time more handsomely produced. Hokum with a big-budget gloss, it's a simple, formulaic nail-biter . . . The script . . . grafts from every possible thriller - most of which had pilfered their predecessors - and loads on implausibilities until we wonder why the actors play it seriously."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film one star and commented, "It's sad to see risk-taking director Mike Figgis do a generic thriller for a paycheck and then not even screw with the rules . . . the only things haunting this movie are cliches."

Mark Sells of The Reel Deal agrees, handing the film 1 1/2 stars out of 5 and concluding that it "disappoints at every turn, ending in a whimper rather than a bang."

Steve Persall of the St. Petersburg Times graded the film D and thought "all this bad acting and run-of-the-thrill dialogue might be entertaining if something would just happen besides a silly snake scare and a wan truck chase. The movie plays like an all-star episode of This Old House for the first hour, a telenovela for the next 30 minutes, then, finally, a hack boogeyman flick in the last reel. This isn't a movie, it's channel surfing."

Todd McCarthy of Variety called the film "a woefully predictable imperiled-yuppie-family-under-siege suspenser that hardly seems worth the attention of its relatively high-profile participants. Taking a break from his multiple-perspective digicam experiments, helmer Mike Figgis displays at best a half-hearted interest in delivering the commercial genre goods, while Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone fish in vain to find any angles to play in their dimension-free characters."

Box office

The film opened in 2,035 theaters in the United States on September 19, 2003 and grossed $8,190,574 in its opening weekend, ranking #5 at the box office behind Underworld, Secondhand Lions, The Fighting Temptations, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. It eventually earned $21,386,011 in the US and $7,733,423 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $29,119,434.

DVD release

Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the film on Region 1 DVD on March 2, 2004. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with audio tracks in English and French and subtitles in Spanish. Bonus features include commentary with director Mike Figgis; deleted scenes and an alternate ending; Rules of the Game, in which Figgis discusses the components of a psychological thriller; and Cooper's Documentary, in which he discusses the process of making the film within the film.

External links

• Cold Creek Manor at IMDb