Actually, I know it's never easy to make a movie. But sometimes you see one and you think, how on earth did this actually get funded, get as far as production, with a script that might have been drafted on a few cocktail napkins? Really, you're going to pour so much money and effort into something that has barely been written? Was it so so easy to say "Sure, this script is ready! Let's roll!" when there are plenty of people involved whose professional instincts should have been screaming "Hit the brakes NOW!!!"
This slapdash assembly of genre elements has too many ideas for one thriller, though none of them are necessarily good, and none of them are developed at all. That includes the dysfunctional family dynamics (so poorly done I wasn't fully sure just how everyone was related to each other), the villain's backstory (there is none--how, and how long, has been getting away with this stuff?), the ridiculous cult-leader-of-sexy-young-women thing, and so forth.
This i one of those movies in which the entire plot falls apart anytime you ask a question like "Didn't they think to ask for references before letting him rent their home?," let alone "Why didn't they call the police?" (you'll ask that one about ten times). It's just sheer carelessness that perhaps could be excused/explained if the film went into production without a finished script (or into the editing room after a budget shortfall caused filming to stop before the whole script had been shot...these things happen). Either that, or the filmmakers simply had no idea their script was Swiss--as in cheese, with lots of holes.
Of course a lot of people are going to find the very idea of David Arquette as a scary bad guy inherently ridiculous. He's adequate here, actually, and could have been pretty good in a better movie. But the other performances are fair to middling, no surprise since they're given so little to work with in terms of scripted character definition.
What worst about this movie, though--even beyond all the above, not to mention the weak non- ending--is its vacuously glossy look, which is more appropriate for a Lifetime or Hallmark movie than a horror thriller. It's like a lifestyle ad for a new upscale suburban development in Utah, the homes are so boringly tasteful and new-looking. Needless to say, this tends to undercut any potential for suspenseful atmosphere--and unlike something like "The Stepfather," "The Cottage" doesn't even think of using that environment subversively, to give the horror elements a more perverse edge.
