Cold Creek seems cheap

After a series of experimental films using digital footage and split screens, Mike Figgis has made a genre flick. The genre is Cursed House. So, a metropolitan family move to a ramshackle manor somewhere upstate, only to discover that the locals are small-minded and the former owner is evil. This young man is played by Stephen Dorff, who has previously been outacted by his jeans. I can report no change here.

Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone are the foolish New Yorkers who thought that buying a 20-roomed house full of satanic scrapbooks and sheepkilling weapons bought at an auction for three quid was a good idea. Both seem confused when it doesn't work out, especially Stone, who wears shades and platform sandals at all times, presumably in an attempt to neither see nor feel the countryside (Stone always has the air of someone desperate to get back to the hotel bar).

There is nothing particularly Figgis about any of this. None of the wacko self-absorption of Timecode, or the feeling eroticism of One Night Stand (in which Nastassja Kinski played a rocket scientist).

It is not only the actors that you can't be sure of (with the exception of Dorff: so dumb he would mistake a soft-boiled egg for a hamburger on skis). It's the script that needs work, going, as it does, along the lines of: "One of the sheep-killing weapons is missing, Dennis;" "Don't give it a moment's thought. I'm going out of town for the night. Will you and the kids be all right alone with that dope Dorff on the loose?"

Luckily, Dorff mistakes a piece of embroidery thread for a musket, and Sharon lives to drive another Jeep.

Cold Creek Manor
Cert: cert15