Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on September 19, 2003, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It’s one of the tenets of the horror/thriller genre to keep things hidden and to keep the viewer guessing—wondering how bad things will get, how far the filmmakers will go, just how heinous the villain’s deeds really are. Cold Creek Manor creates a similar tension, but of a less subjective and pleasurable kind: As its familiar elements mount up, you wait for it to go deeper into its themes or pull a few frightening surprises, but those moments never come. By the second hour, this well-mounted film collapses under the weight of its tired conventions.
Here’s a public service announcement: Despite what the TV ads would have you believe, there’s nothing supernatural going on in the expansive rural house that gives the movie its title. The only “ghost” haunting this mansion is Dale (Stephen Dorff), the black sheep of the family that once owned the place, who is none too pleased to see a new brood moved in when he gets out of jail. The head of this household is Cooper Tilson (Dennis Quaid), a documentary maker who has decided to whisk his wife Leah (Sharon Stone), daughter Kristen (Kristen Wilson) and son Jesse (Ryan Wilson) out of the big bad city to the safety of the suburbs. It’s not long before, in the process of renovating their new home, Cooper finds photographic and other evidence of the Manor’s dark past, and sets about investigating this as his new project. On his first, unannounced visit to his old home, Dale discovers that Cooper’s digging into his past and makes his displeasure known; you’d think that at this point Cooper would move on to some other subject, but then characters like him never make such decisions that might end the story prematurely.
The crux of the film is the conflict between the rough, uncivilized Dale (who seems to have most of the town, including the local sheriff, cowed) and the citified Cooper and clan, who become increasingly antagonized by this local antihero. The most obvious antecedent is Straw Dogs, but Manor director Mike Figgis and scripter Richard Jefferies don’t seem interested in exploring the culture clash in a more than cursory manner, or doing much with the idea of the “civilized” Cooper being forced into “savage” behavior to defend his family. There are also echoes of both versions of Cape Fear as the hunky Dale hangs around shirtless in front of Leah (who, it’s only barely suggested, might have a wandering eye) and leers at Kristen. Wilson, previously terrorized in the far better Panic Room, is too young for this particular subplot to venture to the extremes Robert De Niro and Juliette Lewis explored in the ‘91 Cape, though Lewis is on hand to remind us of it, playing Dale’s white-trash girlfriend. And the finale, in addition to being explicitly telegraphed early on, suggests that Figgis and Jefferies have been studying their Dario Argento as well.
The shame is that for the first hour, Cold Creek Manor feels like it might really be going somewhere. Figgis, following a sojourn in the experimental indie world of Timecode and other small-scale features, returns to the mainstream thriller fold in which he worked so well with Internal Affairs, and his work here is solidly professional and atmospheric. The actors are all well-cast and make their characters believable, and the photography by Declan Quinn, veteran Leslie Dilley’s production design and Figgis’ own music combine to give the movie an above-average veneer. The director takes a subtle approach to suspense in that opening half, evoking a few shivers, but the longer the story goes on, the depressing realization sets in that neither he nor Jefferies has imagined the film in any but the most conventional turns. No amount of directorial steadiness or impassioned performance can surmount the tired predictability of events: Supporting characters are dispatched at just the moments we expect them to be, and the protagonists are ultimately forced to make implausible assumptions and take unbelievable actions.
Figgis and the cast are above this sort of thing, and it’s hard to know whether the material was this generic from the beginning or got blanded down in the development process. Perhaps the rougher edges got shaved off in a bid to appeal to a wider audience, but what’s left is a film that will feel far too familiar to anyone who goes to the movies on even a fairly regular basis. And for horror fans, the only “pleasure” (albeit an ironic one) will be spotting all the past features that Cold Creek Manor too liberally borrows from.
