Reviews and reputation be damned: I enjoyed Cold Creek Manor and it's chilly, mean spirited thrills at the expanse of a family entwined in nasty decades old secrets. I know it's not the greatest flick, and doesn't quite deliver the freaky effect promised by both trailer and cover art, but it's still a lurid little freak show of backwoods danger and sweaty menace. Dennis Quaid plays Cooper Tilson, relocating his family to the country, where they have purchased a run down mansion which used to be a grand estate. Problem is, the manor has a dark and sordid legacy of danger, the overgrown property hiding a murder already years old. The family's arrival awakens long buried demons among the roughneck locals and gradually starts to threaten them with mounting unease. Sharon Stone is reliable as Quaid's wife, and a very young Kristen Stewart plays their daughter. It's ragged edged Stephen Dorff that gives the film life in his intense portrayal of local lowlife Dale Massie, who grew up in the manor and provides a hanging presence of unease for the Tilson family. Juliette Lewis plays yet another snarky rural skank, and there's an unnerving cameo from a barely coherent Christopher Plummer as well. Sure it's cheap thrills and doesn't contain much substance to flesh out its doom laden style, but it's it's a lot of fun and I revisit it quite a bit.

Otherwise known as "Cape Fear For Dummies", this is a hideously lame "suspense thriller" that is not suspenseful or thrilling. At all.

Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone play a married couple who decide to move out of the big city after one of their kids is almost hit by a car. So they buy a big, dilapidated mansion in the sticks called "Cold Creek Manor" and start fixing it up. Then, showing tremendous smarts, they hire Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff),the creepy former owner of the house, to help fix it up. Even though they know he just got out of prison, AND the fact that they just found him roaming around in their house. Guess what? He's a psycho!

Since there's really nothing of worth in this movie at all, I'm just going to offer 10 reasons why you SHOULDN'T see "Cold Creek Manor"...

1. It's so predictable and formulaic that to call it by-the-numbers is an insult to numbers.

2. The name of Quaid's character is "Cooper Tilson". What kind of name is "Cooper Tilson"? The kind you'd only find in a movie.

3. You'll get depressed when you realize the same guy who directed the great "Leaving Las Vegas" (Mike Figgis) also directed this piece of crap.

4. The huge amount of plot holes, stupid coincidences, lapses in logic, and crummy dialogue will lead you to believe that the script was written by a 4 year-old.

5. At one point, while playing hide-and-seek, one of the kids finds part of an old wooden sign on the ground that actually says "EVIL" in big letters. Oooooh, scary!

6. When Massie lets loose snakes in the house, they all attack each separate family member at the EXACT SAME TIME. That's convenient.

7. It's boring.

8. It's really, really boring.

9. It's so boring that you'll leave knowing the exact number of lights that go up and down the theater aisle.

10. It sucks.

Back on its release in 2003, I remember thinking that COLD CREEK MANOR was yet another spooky supernatural flick about a family moving into an old home and being terrorised by its ghostly inhabitants – I imagined something like the diabolical remake of THE HAUNTING. Suffice to say, I never bothered watching it. Seeing it on television the other night, I decided to give it a chance – and I admit I had nothing better to do at the time.

I was surprised. Not because this film was any good – it's not, it's just as bland and predictable as I'd feared – but because there's no supernatural stuff going on here whatsoever. Instead this is a pure psycho-thriller, harking back to those early '90s days when the likes of THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE had audiences sitting on the edges of their seats as normal families were terrorised by crazies. The problem with COLD CREEK MANOR is that it's just plain boring.

I didn't even go in wanting or expecting originality – so when I saw there was none, I wasn't disappointed. Some effective shocks and scares would have helped, but instead we get one or two silly moments, like the laughable 'snakes in the house' interlude which comes off like some lukewarm attempt to mimic ARACHNOPHOBIA. The script is mundane, dragging the straightforward, no-twists-here plot line out to what feels like an unbelievable length, and it's one of those films that had my mind wandering and my eyelids struggling to remain raised, especially in the second half.

The film's biggest problem is the acting. Dennis Quaid, an actor seemingly stuck in a 'mundane' bracket since the 1980s, has a Harrison Ford haircut and that's all you'll notice. He's bland, dull, an utterly unlikable leading man – I was hoping something unpleasant would happen to him, but it never does. Sharon Stone doesn't seem to be putting much effort in playing Quaid's wife, and none of the supporting cast members stand out – Juliette Lewis is here, typecast as 'kooky' as per usual, while Stephen Dorff seems to be trying to channel Billy Zane's personality in DEAD CALM but he comes across as a laughable, non-threatening villain.

Some bloodshed, some decent shocks and some atmosphere could have made this cheesy, scary or worthwhile. It has none of those elements, content instead to rehash the same old ideas, leaving plot holes wide enough for a 4x4 to drive through and generally being a pain in the backside. They could have had fun with this premise, but the po-faced seriousness of it all makes it a stifling watch. Leave it well alone...