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Rated R; running time of 118 minutes
Genre:Thriller
Written by: Richard Jefferies
Directed by: Mike Figgis
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Stephen Dorff, Juliette Lewis, Ryan Wilson, Kristen Stewart, Dana Eskelson, Christopher Plummer.
WARNING - SPOILERS BELOW.
The Digest
Cooper and Leah Tilson (Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone) are a married couple who are just going through the motions. They have 2 kids and are clearly a loving family, but there is clearly something wrong because Leah goes away on a business trip and doesn't spur the advances of a colleague. Meanwhile, Cooper is back home trying to hustle the kids off to school while completing his documentary. Everything changes when their son, Jesse, is almost smashed by a car.
This prompts the family to leave the city behind and look for a safe and quiet place in upstate New York. After coming across a huge estate that is dirt cheap, they settle on the town of Bellevue.
They immediately set out to restore the home and in the process see all the personal effects the previous owners left behind. It would seem that the house belonged to the Masse family and had for centuries. Cooper takes it upon himself to study the family and try to piece together their lives. Before he can get started Dale Masse (Stephen Dorff), who lost the house to the bank, shows up and asks for a job. It is at this point strange things begin to happen. But is Dale the culprit or the savior? Or have the city folk alienated the good townspeople and they want them out?
The Dish
I really do hate a bait and switch. The trailers lead you to believe that it some groovy ghost story when in reality it's a crazy-man-get-out-of-my-house story. And there are far too many crazy-man-get–out-of- my-house stories that are really good for this one to have been so bad. I can't tell you if the acting was bad or the script sucked. All I can tell you is that I stopped paying attention to that as the story progressed and I didn't see any ghosts. I was pretty pissed about it and it distracted me the entire movie.
You know what? That's a lie, I did pay attention to some of the acting because I remember wishing half the cast would disappear. The son Jesse was such a brat that I wanted him gone. Juliette Lewis over-acted and I wanted her gone. Sharon Stone under-acted and I wanted her gone. Stephen Dorff was horribly unconvincing and Christopher Plummer was just weird.
The Directive
Catch it on network television.
This movie should drown itself.
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Copyright Kamal "The Diva" Larsuel-Ulbricht, 2003
EMAIL: thediva@3blackchicks.com
ICQ: 8690410
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