“Cold Creek Manor,” starring Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone as a couple of fugitives from the Big Wormy Apple, reminds us that one person’s windfall can be another’s misfortune. It’s dedicated to anyone who’s ever gone all queasy inside while passing a public-auction sign, which might as well read “Recycled dreams for sale – cheap!”
Though vigorously being pitched as an Old Dark House chiller, this new release in the end proves more unpleasant than scary. It’s not the things that go bump in the night that resonate here but rather the greed and desperation of a New York couple that flees the rat race only to find larger rodents in the country – and, later, staring back from the bedroom mirror.
In this respect, “Cold Creek Manor” couldn’t be better timed: It plays on our current fears of home invasion and financial ruin and harkens back to – without ever equaling – such families-under-siege classics as “Straw Dogs” and “Cape Fear.”
The near death of a son in a traffic accident sets things in motion for Cooper and Leah Tilson (Quaid and Stone).
They decide to swap their Manhattan duplex for a roomier place upstate. They settle on the atmospheric fixer-upper of the title, getting it for a song because its previous owner is either in jail or a nursing home and the county is looking to foreclose.
And then Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), the son of the previous owner (a wonderfully addled Christopher Plummer), returns from prison.
He says he’s not bitter that the Tilsons and their children are now picking through his family albums (“A house is just a shell, right?” he says smiling, scoping out the situation), but the fixed stare and accusatory manner suggest otherwise.
Of course not-so-good-ol’-boy Dale will insinuate himself on the family, first as dinner guest and then as handyman. It’s not hard to get under the Tilsons’ skin, because Cooper is already feeling somewhat useless, impotent, and wife Leah barely can hide her resentment over sacrificing her corporate dreams for a country haven. The couple’s unease is symptomatic of something deeper and, therefore, easily exploitable: a long-festering distrust for each other.
A rare commercial outing by British director Mike Figgis (“Time Code,” “Leaving Las Vegas”), “Cold Creek Manor” keeps us squirming for about two-thirds of its running length. Figgis, a past master of twitchy, improv cinema, methodically ratchets up the suspense by shooting the Tilsons and their new country acquaintances as he might the subjects of a documentary, with handheld camera, long shadows and ominous fades to black.
Easily the most effective (read: unnerving) sequence takes place in a roadside grocery-tavern where, over one too many whiskeys, Dale and his trailer-trash girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) finally lose their cool and get in Cooper’s face. Cooper finds his courage at the bottom of a shot glass: He’s mad as hell but wobbly on his feet.
Quaid is great in this scene, at once pushy and pathetic. Like Nick Nolte’s character in the Scorsese remake of “Cape Fear,” Cooper is dangerously out of his league and deserves most of what he gets.
Stone, in her comeback role after last year’s life-threatening brain hemorrhage, is surprisingly ineffectual: Her Leah always seems tired, preoccupied. I’m guessing this can be traced to either a lack of stamina or a contempt for her secondary wifey role, or maybe both.
Whatever the case, in the third act, “Cold Creek Manor” collapses in a heap. Dad is blamed for the horse in the swimming pool; the local cop proves as useless as she is dense; Dale turns out to be exactly what we suspected all along; and Leah stumbles back into harm’s way for no good reason, other than to involve Stone in the stock dark-and-stormy-night finale.
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COLD CREEK MANOR
2-1/2 stars
Rated: R (profanity, violence, sexual content)
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Stephen Dorff
Director: Mike Figgis
Writer-director: Richard Jeffries
Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes
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(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
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AP-NY-09-19-03 1319EDT
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