''Cold Creek Manor'' is a 2003 American
thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
directed by
Mike Figgis, and starring
Dennis Quaid,
Sharon Stone,
Stephen Dorff,
Juliette Lewis
Juliette Lake Lewis (born June 21, 1973) is an American actress and alternative rock singer. She is known for her portrayals of offbeat characters, often in films with dark themes. Lewis became an "it girl" of American cinema in the early 1990s, ...
,
Kristen Stewart and
Christopher Plummer. The screenplay by
Richard Jefferies
John Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 – 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influ ...
tells the story of a family terrorized by the former owner of the rural estate they bought in foreclosure.
Plot
Cooper Tilson, his wife Leah and their two children, Kristen and Jesse, move from New York to the country after purchasing a mansion. The previous owner, Dale Massie, convinces Cooper to hire him to help with repairs. Dale, recently released from prison, initially appears to be a good, kind worker.
As Cooper sorts through the mess in the house, he comes across many old documents and photographs, and decides to record the history of the building on film. A series of unusual incidents start to occur; Cooper is pursued by an unknown car, multiple venomous snakes are found in the property, and Kristen's horse is mysteriously killed, leading Cooper to suspect Dale. Cooper also witnesses Dale strike his girlfriend Ruby in a crowded bar.
To learn the details of the manor's past, Cooper visit's Dale's aging, demented father who lives in a nearby nursing home. The man's disjointed comments lead Cooper to believe Dale murdered his wife and children who have been missing for several years; Dale claims his wife fled with the children when he was imprisoned. Sheriff Annie Ferguson, Ruby's sister, is initially skeptical about Cooper's accusation but later slowly starts to believe he may be correct.
One afternoon after a heated argument with Dale, Cooper finds a
dental retainer along with human teeth in the gravel of his driveway, which he compares to old photos and finds it matches that of Dale's daughter. Afraid for his family's safety, Cooper sends them back to stay in the city while he attempts to gather more evidence to incriminate Dale. Meanwhile, Dale visits his father and smothers him to death when he insults him and reveals his knowledge of Dale's crimes.
Later that night as a storm approaches, Leah returns to the house alone, having been informed by the children the location of a deep well on the property, called the Devil's Throat. She and Cooper lower a video camera into the well and find the rotting corpses of Dale's wife and children. Cooper contacts Sheriff Ferguson, unaware Dale has attacked and disabled her and she is unconscious in her office. Dale goes to Devils Throat and punctures Cooper's truck tires. Dale pushes leah into the well but Cooper manages to pull her out. They get back to the house where Dale has torched Leahs car. The Tilsons find themselves trapped in the house as Dale cuts the electricity.
After a chase, Dale corners Cooper and Leah atop the roof, and openly declares his intent to kill them and dump their bodies down the Devil's Throat like he did to his family. The couple charge at him with a line of rope, knocking him off his feet, then bind him against a
roof lantern
A roof lantern is a daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure.
A lantern roof wil ...
. Cooper shatters the skylight, sending Dale to his death.
Dale's wife and children's remains are recovered and then entombed in the family graveyard at Cold Creek Manor, as are his own. The Tilsons continue to live in Cold Creek Manor.
Cast
Production
The film was shot on location in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
Kitchener,
Ayr
Ayr (; sco, Ayr; gd, Inbhir Àir, "Mouth of the River Ayr") is a town situated on the southwest coast of Scotland. It is the administrative centre of the South Ayrshire council area and the historic county town of Ayrshire. With a population ...
,
Brougham and
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
.
Release
Critical response
The movie received negative reviews from critics. It holds a 12% rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 111 reviews, with an average rating of 3.8/10. The site's consensus states: "The plot of ''Cold Creek Manor'' is too predictable and contrived to generate suspense". On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
— which assigns a weighted mean score — the film has a score of 37 out of 100 based on 31 critics, indicating "generally negative reviews". Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film a grade "C−" on a scale of A+ to F.
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic.
Biography
Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...
of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' 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
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'' rated the film 1½ stars and called it "an
anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors.
In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...
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
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
'' 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
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' 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".
Steve Persall of the ''
St. Petersburg Times
The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single ...
'' 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
''This Old House'' is an American home improvement media brand with television shows, a magazine, and a websiteThisOldHouse.com. The brand is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The television series airs on the American television networ ...
'' for the first hour, a
telenovela
A telenovela is a type of a television serial drama or soap opera produced primarily in Latin America. The word combines ''tele'' (for "television") and ''novela'' (meaning "novel"). Similar drama genres around the world include '' teleserye'' ...
for the next 30 minutes, then, finally, a hack boogeyman flick in the last reel. This isn't a movie, it's
channel surfing
Channel surfing (also known as channel hopping or zapping) is the practice of quickly scanning through different television channels or radio frequencies to find something interesting to watch or listen to. Modern viewers, who may have cable or ...
".
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
The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
...
'', ''
Secondhand Lions
''Secondhand Lions'' is a 2003 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Tim McCanlies. It tells the story of an introverted young boy (Haley Joel Osment) who is sent to live with his eccentric great uncles (Robert Duvall and Michael Cai ...
'', ''
The Fighting Temptations'' and ''
Once Upon a Time in Mexico''. It eventually earned $21,386,011 in the United States and $7,733,423 in foreign markets, for a total worldwide box office of $29,119,434.
Home media
Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the film on Region 1 DVD on March 2, 2004. It is in
anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen (also called Full height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a comparatively wide widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or MPEG-2 standard-definition frame, for exam ...
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. A
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
edition was released September 4, 2012.
Notes
References
External links
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{{Mike Figgis
2003 films
2003 horror films
2000s mystery films
American horror thriller films
2003 psychological thriller films
American mystery thriller films
American psychological thriller films
American thriller drama films
2000s English-language films
Films directed by Mike Figgis
Films about families
Films about snakes
Films set in country houses
Films shot in Ontario
Touchstone Pictures films
2000s American films