Warning - minor spoilers about the first half hour. Like you will care if you bother to watch the film.
Well its been years since I have been moved to write a review of a film on IMDB, the last time to brutalize the film "Damage". Its not bad films per-se that upset me so much as films that promise so much more (or even as in this case promise at least a half hours entertainment), and deliver so little. And thats right where "Cold Creek Manor" fits in - it just completely blindsided me.
Foolishly I didn't bother to read the IMDB reviews before renting this insult to turkeys. What suckered me in was the reasonable cast - they may not be everyone's favourites but they all can act well if they want to. However a plot like this could make Olivier look like a chump.
Lets start with the "plot" then. Documentary filmmaker and high-flying business wife along with two kids decide to move to the country and buy a re-possessed home in order to avoid high-flying wife's potential infidelity and, err, traffic accidents? The entire first 20 minutes of the film could have been skipped, as well as the whole tearful admission scene later in the film. We just don't care enough about these people who can afford to take an entire year off to play house and buy ponies. I'd be on the side of the dispossessed locals - if only they had brains larger than walnuts. Anyway, the family apparently buy the house with the contents and proceed to go through them keeping bits and pieces that give them jollies. Father keeps some semi-pornographic photos of the teenage girl who used to live in the house, then hides them from his wife - then puts a whole bunch of other photos and documents in a timeline on the wall (my weirdo-meter is going off the scope here). The son picks up some colouring book with some kind of mantra and recites it over and over as well as the clothes from the young boy who used to live there (like father like son I guess). Dad also keeps some sharp looking hammers from the previous occupants hanging around on the wall. Doesn't anyone find this bizarre behaviour? WHY would you do any of this? Why would you want other people's old crap? Stereos and TVs maybe, but clothing and photos and deadly pointed hammers? No - thats just WEIRD AND STRANGE.
Dad then decides to make a documentary about the house. Like anyone would be interested? Then, while eating breakfast a hillbilly wanders in, announces he used to own the place and just got out of prison, is served breakfast, asks for and gets a job based on his "knowledge of the house". I mean he might as well have come in with "PSYCHO KILLER" tattooed on his forehead and a big pointed mallet in his hand dripping with blood, and these bozos would still have lapped it up. I mean somebody walks into my house and says oh I used to live here and there is either a body bag or a restraining order in their future. Now if this was just a standard "Don't go down into the darkened basement with no light, arrrgh, stop, no, arrgh" moment then OK - but its not. Anyway - things go downhill from there if you can believe it.
There is zero suspense in this film. There are zero plot twists whatsoever. The plot simply rambles along, forgets where it is, doubles back to pick up a cliche or two and then repeats the process all over again. The soundtrack will telegraph a "gotcha" moment which we either knew was arriving half an hour before or which isn't really a "gotcha" at all. There are so many plot holes, dead end storylines and reality-suspending moments that one thousand words is not enough space to truly ravage this fetid garbage masquerading as a film.
Really, honestly - I could have written a better film at the age of twelve. I am struggling with the concept that somebody actually sat down and wrote this and believed it to be good. I struggle further with the knowledge that some executive read the screenplay and thought - "Wow - what a great idea, lets throw out all those other scripts we have been looking at and make this masterpiece". WHY?
Well its been years since I have been moved to write a review of a film on IMDB, the last time to brutalize the film "Damage". Its not bad films per-se that upset me so much as films that promise so much more (or even as in this case promise at least a half hours entertainment), and deliver so little. And thats right where "Cold Creek Manor" fits in - it just completely blindsided me.
Foolishly I didn't bother to read the IMDB reviews before renting this insult to turkeys. What suckered me in was the reasonable cast - they may not be everyone's favourites but they all can act well if they want to. However a plot like this could make Olivier look like a chump.
Lets start with the "plot" then. Documentary filmmaker and high-flying business wife along with two kids decide to move to the country and buy a re-possessed home in order to avoid high-flying wife's potential infidelity and, err, traffic accidents? The entire first 20 minutes of the film could have been skipped, as well as the whole tearful admission scene later in the film. We just don't care enough about these people who can afford to take an entire year off to play house and buy ponies. I'd be on the side of the dispossessed locals - if only they had brains larger than walnuts. Anyway, the family apparently buy the house with the contents and proceed to go through them keeping bits and pieces that give them jollies. Father keeps some semi-pornographic photos of the teenage girl who used to live in the house, then hides them from his wife - then puts a whole bunch of other photos and documents in a timeline on the wall (my weirdo-meter is going off the scope here). The son picks up some colouring book with some kind of mantra and recites it over and over as well as the clothes from the young boy who used to live there (like father like son I guess). Dad also keeps some sharp looking hammers from the previous occupants hanging around on the wall. Doesn't anyone find this bizarre behaviour? WHY would you do any of this? Why would you want other people's old crap? Stereos and TVs maybe, but clothing and photos and deadly pointed hammers? No - thats just WEIRD AND STRANGE.
Dad then decides to make a documentary about the house. Like anyone would be interested? Then, while eating breakfast a hillbilly wanders in, announces he used to own the place and just got out of prison, is served breakfast, asks for and gets a job based on his "knowledge of the house". I mean he might as well have come in with "PSYCHO KILLER" tattooed on his forehead and a big pointed mallet in his hand dripping with blood, and these bozos would still have lapped it up. I mean somebody walks into my house and says oh I used to live here and there is either a body bag or a restraining order in their future. Now if this was just a standard "Don't go down into the darkened basement with no light, arrrgh, stop, no, arrgh" moment then OK - but its not. Anyway - things go downhill from there if you can believe it.
There is zero suspense in this film. There are zero plot twists whatsoever. The plot simply rambles along, forgets where it is, doubles back to pick up a cliche or two and then repeats the process all over again. The soundtrack will telegraph a "gotcha" moment which we either knew was arriving half an hour before or which isn't really a "gotcha" at all. There are so many plot holes, dead end storylines and reality-suspending moments that one thousand words is not enough space to truly ravage this fetid garbage masquerading as a film.
Really, honestly - I could have written a better film at the age of twelve. I am struggling with the concept that somebody actually sat down and wrote this and believed it to be good. I struggle further with the knowledge that some executive read the screenplay and thought - "Wow - what a great idea, lets throw out all those other scripts we have been looking at and make this masterpiece". WHY?