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HOUSE OF WAX ** out of ***** Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra Written by Charles Belden (story) Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes (screenplay) Cast Elisha Cuthbert .... Carly Jones Chad Michael Murray .... Nick Jones Brian Van Holt .... Bo/Vincent Paris Hilton .... Paige Edwards Jared Padalecki .... Wade Jon Abrahams .... Dalton Chapman Robert Ri'chard .... Blake Dragicia Debert .... Trudy Sinclair Thomas Adamson .... Young Bo Murray Smith .... Dr. Sinclair Sam Harkess .... Young Vincent Damon Herriman .... Roadkill Driver Andy Anderson .... Sheriff
A few years ago the Paramount Theatre in Wellington screened the 1953 House of Wax in 3D. I went with about six friends. We made up 60% of the crowd. The 3D effects were okay. The movie was good. When I walked into this version the theatre was almost full. It gave me a feeling of resigned acceptance. Since the remake bears only a small resemblance to the original I won’t mention it again.
 | Look at their expressions. Is there
anything about them that doesn't
say "dead meat"? | House of Wax is a passable horror film. It does a few things well. The best actors spend the most time on screen and there's some nice imaginative gore. But it also does a lot of things, if not exactly badly, just not well enough. The result is a forgettable horror film that will no doubt blend into the many other teens-trapped-in-small-towns horrors that I’ve seen. Yes, Paris Hilton is in it. She’s not great. Believe it or not, I heard some people snickering when she delivered her lines.
The plot revolves around a bunch of teens headed to the biggest college football game of the year. They take a shortcut which turns out to not be so short, so they stop for the night and camp. A dirty 4WD pulls up in the middle of the night and shines its high beams at them, then leaves. The next day one of their two vehicles has been tampered with. Some of them stay behind to get it fixed, others go to the game.
 | Cuthbert really is pretending to be
one of the wax figures at this point
in the film. Really. | But there’s too much traffic to make it to the game, so they turn back. Meanwhile, the other teens (there’s no real need to distinguish them), with the help of a generic dodgy redneck, comes to a creepy town. The town and its residents are being turned to wax. There is the House of Wax which is entirely made of wax, in an amazing display of wax logistics. The dastardly villain, or villains, turning people to wax now have our teens split up, and start stalking, hacking, waxing, and turning them into wax sculptures.
This film has more twins than it knows what to do with. Why? Well the fact that the screenwriters, Chad and Carey Hayes, are twin brothers may have something to do with it. Our heroes are twins, Carly and Nick. Carly’s the good twin, about to go to New York for an internship with In Style magazine, which I assume is meant to be impressive. Nick’s the bad twin who’s always in trouble with the law, but maybe isn’t as bad as he makes out. And our villains are twins.
Seriously, Chad and Carey. Twins and their similarities, differences, estrangements, and shared hobbies may be an important subject to you, but the rest of us don't really give a crap. Is one twin evil? Are both evil? Whatever. There’s so much twin symbolism going on, and it all adds up to nothing. Is the point they’re trying to make that there isn’t always an evil twin? I hope so, because that’s a gloriously stupid point to feel you actually need to make.
The House of Wax set itself doesn’t quite cut it. Sure, it’s nice (if unrealistic) that the whole building is made of wax. But it just isn’t creepy. It seems so spacious and well lit, and the wax sculptures aren’t actually that good. Rather than the work of a diabolical murderer, it looks more like the work of a small town hack craft junkie. I think the lighting may be wrong. This film has a glossy Ikea catalogue look, not a grimy horror film look. Perhaps this is because director Jaume was a commercial director in France. Seriously, can we get a creative team that brings a little bit less baggage to the film?
A lot of the plot is moved forward because the teens snoop to an unrealistic degree. I can handle that. But sometimes there’s feeble plot points that don’t even help the plot. At one point Generic Teen Subgroup C won’t drive a 4WD into the spooky town because of a washed out river. A big deal is made of this, though the river looks pretty gentle and most of the hazard seems to be moss. Later on when the 4WD could be used by one of them, the now dead one has the keys. If that’s the case, why not just drive it over the moss and not try to sell the feeble car-leaving excuse?
 | This was not Cuthbert's wedding
night fantasy. | The scene when Paris finally gets done in (which is not a spoiler since there are promotional materials that say "See Paris die") is a bit of a let down. I personally don’t feel strongly for Paris either way, so wasn’t too fussed about her getting knocked off for any deep-seated emotional gratification. The way she dies is pretty cool. It’s the stalking that leads up to it that’s choppy beyond belief. First, she takes two paces from her tent and appears in a building that hasn’t been seen or mentioned previously. Then, there are things like the murderer trying to stab her from below through a metal grate floor. As Paris escapes by running down the stairs she looks up to see if the murderer is up there.
So in the end we have a gimmicky horror that isn’t very original. Some of the stalking scenes are okay, and the deaths are nifty, but the second they finish and we return to the plot it’s like all the air gets sucked out of the theatre. It’s not scary. The are two people called Chad involved in it, and one called Jaume. That’s not scary either. One scene looks like Alan Rickman stalking Mark Cuban. That's would be scary as a nightmare, but not in a movie.
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