The kind of aggressively bad psychological thriller which can kill the career of a director, Figgis' Cold Creek Manor starts with the classic scenario of a wealthy family (Dennis Quaid is the father, Sharon Stone the mother, Kristen Stewart one of the children) moving to an isolated manor and facing its mysteries.
Perverse credit is due to the movie because, usually, you can add to this kind of review some condescending "That scene was fine" or "Acting was solid" comment; it takes a special alchemy to make nothing work. Quaid is awful, Stone is awful, Stewart is awful, Dorff as the vengeful previous owner is awful, Lewis as his morally loathsome belle is awful. Pacing is a disaster, tone ranges between tedious and involuntarily funny - a scene with the whole family running around the house pursued by snakes, led by Quaid hysterically screaming at the top of his lungs, is the kind of comedic gem the Scary Movie series wishes it could equal.
A subtext about class rivalry and sexuality is so obvious - with Dorff as the aggressive country yahoo, Quaid as the emasculated intellectual and Stone as the unsatisfied wife - the script shouldn't have bothered at all, since it ultimately goes nowhere. And yet I'm sure people in the production were smugly satisfied for, say, the "clever" symbolism of the snakes scene. Sorry, but it's better to go for pure schlock than to be so ponderous and trite.
3,5/10
Perverse credit is due to the movie because, usually, you can add to this kind of review some condescending "That scene was fine" or "Acting was solid" comment; it takes a special alchemy to make nothing work. Quaid is awful, Stone is awful, Stewart is awful, Dorff as the vengeful previous owner is awful, Lewis as his morally loathsome belle is awful. Pacing is a disaster, tone ranges between tedious and involuntarily funny - a scene with the whole family running around the house pursued by snakes, led by Quaid hysterically screaming at the top of his lungs, is the kind of comedic gem the Scary Movie series wishes it could equal.
A subtext about class rivalry and sexuality is so obvious - with Dorff as the aggressive country yahoo, Quaid as the emasculated intellectual and Stone as the unsatisfied wife - the script shouldn't have bothered at all, since it ultimately goes nowhere. And yet I'm sure people in the production were smugly satisfied for, say, the "clever" symbolism of the snakes scene. Sorry, but it's better to go for pure schlock than to be so ponderous and trite.
3,5/10