House of Wax is Lifeless

A group of students making their way to the collegiate football game of the year suffer a mysterious breakdown to one of their vehicles after spending the night camping en route to the event. While the majority of the group decides to continue on to the game, Carly (Elisha Cuthbert, The Girl Next Door) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki, Flight of the Phoenix) make their way into the small town of Ambrose, only a short jaunt away, to search for a new fan belt for their car.

The town, whose main attraction is the unusually constructed Trudy’s House of Wax, is ominously quiet, the only residents apparently active being an elderly woman looking out her living room window and a belligerent gas station owner named Bo (Brian Van Holt, Black Hawk Down) paying his last respects at a local funeral. He’s got a fan belt, but he’s not going to be able to sell it to the couple until after the service has comes to a close. With time to kill, Carly and Wade decide to check out the wax museum, discovering the most chillingly lifelike attractions they’ve ever seen.

What they don’t know is that there is a reason these waxworks are disturbingly real, and the secret behind Ambrose’s serenity is hidden in plain sight on constant permanent display. When Carly’s ex-con brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray, A Cinderella Story) returns with the couple’s friends, everyone suddenly finds they must do all they can to, not only escape the town, but also become a permanent part of the town’s waxy statuary. One by one, each is stalked by a mysterious artist bent on their demise, Nick, Carly and the rest hoping to escape a Barbie Doll fate far worse than death.

First things first; everyone going to House of Wax wanting to see Paris Hilton (Fox’s The Simple Life) meet her just deserts will find much to cheer about. Her demise is spectacularly gruesome, gory and bloody and the filmmakers even throw in an entirely too obvious gag about the hotel heiress’ penchant for letting herself get recorded on video tape. If this is the only reason you’re going to the movie, and lord knows it might be the only good reason to actually go, you’re sure to come away as enthused and excited as the preview crowd I saw it with. If, however, you’re expecting a reasonably fun and intelligent update of the wondrous 1953 Vincent Price original you’re entirely in the wrong place. This is not that movie. (Side note: For those that think I’ve given away a major spoiler, please think again. All you have to do is look at the cast listing and you’ll know exactly who dies when, and it’s not like Miss Hilton hasn’t been going around from talk show to talk show saying how much fun it was to die on film.)

This is an exuberantly idiotic horror show that wears its absurdity proudly upon its sleeve. Screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes (making their theatrical debuts) pack the movie with so many, “Don’t go in there!” clichés you’d think they thought they were inventing them. So many moments don’t so much illicit shrieks as they do giggles, the audience I saw it with more than willing to laugh directly at the picture whenever it pulled out another in a seemingly unending line of brain-dead plot threads so heinous they could have been thought up by a barrel of monkeys. Even for a B-grade horror flick, the duo’s script is a mess, easily taking up the frontward position as one of the most dim-witted and asinine of 2005.

And yet, somehow, someway, House of Wax is never quite as hard a sit as it should be. Cuthbert is a perky damsel-in-distress, Murray’s loner tough guy routine (the same one he uses on the WB’s One Tree Hill) is surprisingly effective and Van Holt is a menacingly efficient villain (even if the dual characters he plays are way too obvious). Director Jaume Collet-Serra (a commercial director making his theatrical debut) sets a gruesomely nasty tone early on, and he’s not afraid to let scenes play out over time refusing to fill the picture with a series of Michael Bay-like jump cuts and hyper-fast edits. Best of all, the production design team behind the remake has completely outdone themselves, creating an entire town of wax figurines so unsettling and creepy they’d probably make a mint making the rounds on a museum tour.

The centerpiece, of course, is the gigantic House of Wax, the museum itself made entirely out of wax. It’s awesome, and when the whole thing start to melt in a gigantic bonfire of hellfire insanity the effect is startling, everything oozing this way and that like glaze slowly encasing the pulpous exterior of a jelly doughnut. Production designer Graham 'Grace' Walker (Gothika) and the whole troupe of special effects and creative technicians behind putting it all together should give themselves a collective pat on the back, their combined efforts elevating things to a level this freak show simply shouldn’t attain.

Not that said level is still very high. This is a bad horror movie and an even worse remake. The blood may spurt freely (and there is a certain kick out of seeing Hilton bite the big one) and the craftsmanship behind it all might impress, but that still doesn’t make what’s going on up onscreen all that interesting. In the end, House of Wax is just as cold, impersonal and lifeless as the ghoulish statues populating it.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)