La gorge du diable

Generally speaking I will buy the DVD of any movie starring Juliette Lewis, so I finally caught up with "Cold Creek Manor" when I found it on DVD. I expected it to be pretty bad because of what I've read about it. But it's not so bad a film. I stayed with it anyway. Juliette, as usual, is wasted in a thankless part. It's a shame these days that genuinely fine actors do these trailer trash kind of roles, mostly because big stars and lesser actors won't do them. If Juliette was around in the old days she would have had the roles they gave Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland or Joan Crawford. Today she does roles like this (not to mention her career nadir in an episode of the mind-numbingly awful "My Name is Earl"). Dennis Quaid, Shane Stone and the young actors playing their children are very good. I really liked this family. I suppose the lack of suspense is due to the fact that there was little conflict between them other than the usual family gripes. There was an undeveloped plot point where Stone admits to considering an affair. This could have been interesting. Brad Pittish Stephen Dorff's character was underdeveloped. The gradual revelation of his past was not suspenseful enough to be effective and this is something of a fatal flaw. I am glad Mike Figgis scrapped the alternate ending that was included in the DVD's special features. But I think the pool scene might have worked, though it would have made the film unnecessarily longer. "Cold Creek Manor" reminded me "Straw Dogs" and pales in comparison. But on its own merits, it's nowhere near as bad as the comments on this website indicate. Worth a look.

OK we've all seen this type of film before, family leave problems and life in the city for a new start in the country only to find far greater and real problems than those they left behind.

Unfortunately it's just not done particularly well in this movie. It starts well and gives the impression it will lead into some kind of haunted mansion movie once the family arrive at their new home. However, what happens is far less exciting.

Quaid gives another solid but unremarkable performance, Dorff is passable but his character never seems as threatening as he should be, Lewis plays the kind of role she seems to fit like a glove. The one thing I realised from this film is Sharon Stone has no impact or presence on the screen at all, I mean she had an impact on me when I was 15 and first saw Basic Instinct, but hey. She is one of the few actresses I would actually advise to only accept films with nudity scenes involved.

The direction is only apt, you feel there is meant to be some kind of attraction or sexual tension between Dorff's and Stone's character but whether due to the fault of the Director or actors it does not work at all. It is also at times very predictable, which is not a good factor for a thriller.

The film does have it's redeeming features, it does at least keep you interested enough to follow through to the climax just to see what happens. It is one though you will not be revisiting soon again.

Naturally the only reason to watch this for me was the fact that it had Sharon Stone in it. Unfortunately, though I was expecting absolutely nothing, I somehow got less.

The movie takes place within the rustic country side, in the world of the rednecks, the folksy, "The Real America. The Small Town America". Thusly it must belong to the "city idiots move to the country side and get buggered, either literally or figuratively, by hicks" -genre. This is not merely flogging of the dead horse anymore, but waving your whip over the nearest glue factory. Yes, Deliverance was and is a brilliant film, but it also contained such elements as a plot, some common sense, mood and characters you didn't hope to die from the word go.

The story is, in all of it's generic depression, this: Sharon Stone and her husband, a documentary movie director guy, move out of the city since their children are either bred wrong or it's just natural selection that makes them run in front of cars like it's going out of style. They manage to find a huge Wayne's Manor with it's own forest, the yard the size of a golf course and a swimming pool for about $3,50, since "it's foreclosed, yo, so the bank sells it real cheap like". But who would have know, the former owner shambles in looking for a job.

I hated this character from his very first scene. And I don't mean that he is written to be a hateful character; I mean I am amazed how it is possible to write such a generic, pointless, irritating and uninteresting main antagonist. Of course also the dad starts to immediately hate this newcomer and this feeling is mutual. The audience merely hates everybody, since they are all equally boring, pretentious, over reacting bunch of monkeys.

My very favourite series of events begins when the redneck dude saves the children from a snake that is in the pool. When he himself gets fired, the whole house is suddenly full of snakes. And every family member magically places their hands on the slimy buggers at the exactly same moment. I can hardly imagine the mountain of Oscars that must adorn the window sills of the responsible parties' trailers. And somehow the horrendous musical score manages to make this embarrassing mess even stupider than it already is. Which is an considerable effort.

Of course the movie is also eternally long. After 30 minutes I had spent all my hospitality, but the thing just keeps chugging along. To my peer Sharon Stone fans: let it be known, that she does what she can with the stuff she is given, but her role could just as easily be played by a marionette made out of dead rats. Juliette Lewis is also present, wasted like everything else.

In the name of honesty I have to report that there were few rather decent scenes near the end, and they bothered to even pay off some of the things that are set in motion. This is good, because almost an hour and a half is used to nothing but these preliminaries. Also, the ending is so sickly anticlimactic and the zenith of predictable, that even the makers of silent movies would have laughed it out of the room. You could easily foretell everything that happens, and usually it looked better made and more visionary in your mind.

So, this was, in a word, wretchid. I was lucky I saw it on the television and didn't pay a dime. Even though I would like to urinate on my audiovisual equipment just to make sure no remnant of it remains within my apartments threshold.

I've seen way flakier movies that were smash hits. Most Hollywood thrillers & action movies have to be viewed with a willing suspension of disbelief anyhow. People do things they'd never do in real life. They ask stupid questions & accept answers that no one with a high school education and an IQ in even low triple digits would accept in real life. They walk away from falls, car crashes and burning buildings that would kill real human beings. They *split up* to look for the ghost/axe murder/evil demon! So, what's wrong with this one? I got involved. I got tense. I was on the edge of my seat.

I liked it.

The tension was built up without any reference to gory scenes, just creepy camera angles, shadows, the wind blowing curtains, the increasing feeling that Something Really Bad was just around the corner.

You get to see Sharon Stone looking almost like an ordinary human being. Dennis Quaid is his usual edgy self. Stephen Dorff does a great slide into madness.

If I'd believed everything I read about it, I never would've picked up the DVD. It's not Hitchcock, but it's definitely worth watching. Check it out.

Dennis Quaid decides to escape the hectic life of the big city so he inexplicably moves his wife Sharon Stone and kids into a run-down farmhouse in the absolute middle of nowhere. Steven Dorff appears and strange things start happening.

This movie is plain lousy. It has every thriller cliché in the book. You can figure out what's going on well before the movie lets you in on it.

A total bomb from director Figgis. The plot has more holes than Swiss cheese and the characters act the most stupidly of any characters I've ever seen in the movies. This one will have you screaming at the screen at the stupidity of the characters. Lots of lightning and thunder. Wow am I ever scared. A thriller without the thrills.

Quaid is one of my favorite actors and he's wasted in this.

Wretched, simply wretched.