Found Family
The Cottage (2012): 3 out of 10: is one of those movies that proves the old adage: a gorgeous multimillion-dollar home is no guarantee of a good screenplay.
We open on a blended family living in what can only be described as a Hallmark Channel mansion perfectly staged, immaculate, and utterly inexplicable given that Dad is a mild-mannered music teacher who gives single-student piano lessons while Mom seems to do little except resent everyone around her. Their two teenage daughters are respectively the one who is a complete bitch and the one who is some random flavor of neurodivergent, and they all hate each other with the intensity of a thousand CW dramas.
Because they “need the money,” the family decides to rent out their two-story guest house, a structure larger than most human dreams, to a stranger. Enter David Arquette, playing a soft-spoken writer who publishes Kindle romances. The movie tragically misses the opportunity to let him be a werewolf-romance author or one of those “Alpha Daddy Billionaire Fireman Cowboy MC Reverse Harem” scribes. (or even Double Mountain Trouble: A MFM Menage Romance). Instead, the titles of his books are so painfully dull they barely qualify as text. (This one is called Madge’s Day Out).
Still, he somehow rents the cottage, and the family’s already shaky interpersonal dynamics become shakier, especially when Arquette’s cult-girl entourage shows up. Yes, David Arquette comes with Charlie Manson Girls, and, shockingly, this is the part of the movie that actually works. Their casting is weirdly excellent, and the contrast between them and the suburban Hallmark family is almost interesting.
From here on out, the film shifts gears from tedious domestic misery to low-budget thriller with hints of Amityville Dollhouse and The Strangers: Prey at Night. Every now and then you glimpse the fun, sharper movie this could have been. Unfortunately, those glimpses are spaced between long stretches of characters making bizarre decisions, ghastly line readings, and, for reasons known only to the filmmakers, leaving the baby unattended in random rooms, as if this is a stealth sequel to Baby’s Day Out.
The Good
The Good: Shockingly, Arquette is one of the few bright spots here. He’s not knocking it out of the park, but he’s at least in the ballpark, unlike several cast members who seem to have gotten lost on the way to an audition for a daytime soap. His Manson-esque “girls” are the film’s secret weapon. They are creepy, convincing, and honestly the most interesting thing on screen.
Once the cult storyline emerges, the movie finds something resembling momentum. It’s not good, but you can at least imagine putting the remote down for a few moments.
The Bad
The Bad: The father (Victor Browne) is a pretty-boy with no gravitas, the mother (Kristen Dalton) is aggressively bland, and the daughters (Morissa O’Mara, Alana O’Mara) vacillate between painful and perplexing. Some scenes between non-Arquette cast members achieve a kind of anti-chemistry rare in the wild.
Suspicious of Arquette from moment one. Constantly abandoning a baby in empty rooms. Renting out their property despite acting like they’ve never interacted with a renter or a human being in their lives. Every decision feels like it’s been made by tired writers without a clue.
You can feel the Lifetime script sweating through each line. There’s a strain of “I wrote two completely different screenplays but neither has a third act” energy baked into the dialogue.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Nothing makes sense. Not the finances. Not the house. Not the family dynamic. Not the decisions. Not the way every character looks as if they wandered in from a different movie.
The movie wants us to believe that a piano teacher and a stay-at-home mom are maintaining a four-to-five-million-dollar mansion through music lessons and renting to Kindle authors. (I mean, the house has an infinity pool for Christ’s sake.) They would be lucky to afford a walk-up in California. I don’t know how they pay their water bill. This isn’t just unrealistic; it’s fantasy world-building, and not the good kind.
The bigger problem is The Cottage is so poorly paced that you have plenty of time to wonder such things while watching it.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: The Cottage isn’t terrible enough to be “so bad it’s good,” nor competent enough to be good. It’s a strange, wobbly little thriller that starts slow, eventually finds half a pulse, and then trips over its own shoelaces. There are flickers, just flickers, of a more interesting film inside it, especially whenever David Arquette and his cult girls are on screen. But the movie spends so much time on unlikeable characters, logic-free choices, and dead-air dialogue that even the good ideas drown under the weight of the execution.
You’ll wonder how this family affords their mansion. You’ll wonder why they hate each other. You’ll wonder why the baby keeps being abandoned in random hallways. You’ll wonder why you’re still watching.
It is a shame because the ingredients for a much better film are right here. I am not saying they had to go all Last House on the Left here, but when I am thinking I might have been too hard on The Strangers: Prey at Night, you done fucked up.
