Movie Review: House of Wax

by Chris

Recently I had the pleasure of seeing House of Wax, a remake of a 1952 horror flick. Though, I suppose pleasure isn’t the right word. Something like extreme craptastic displeasure of having to sit through this terrible horror movie cliché-chocked piece of gory 1950’s remake gutter trash would be more appropriate. After some of the movie theater trash I forced myself to sit through lately, I was hoping House of Wax would be a respite from all that, but it didn’t quite reach the bar.

Now except for *gag* Paris Hilton, the trailers for this movie looked pretty promising. Also the idea in itself (despite being a remake) looked pretty innovative. So, being a lover of all things horror and innovative my naïveté led me to see this film. It starts off as it seems all horror movies of this age do, with a group of youngsters on some kind of road trip. Not long after the movie begins they stop to – wait for it – camp out in the forest. Probably didn’t see that one coming. Naturally their car breaks down (or something to that equivalent) so two of the young travelers hitch a ride with some creepy smelly guy to a small town for whatever part of their car that is missing. Not an original concept in that whole paragraph.

In this movie the particular group of youngsters (not that it really matters) are Carly and her “twin” brother Nick (Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray), Bo, the jokester pal who you know is going to die first, and a few other kids who also die but you really don’t care because they were never that important in the first place. Carly and Wade, her boyfriend, stumble upon a House of Wax (it’s literally made of wax) and of course they walk inside with no regard for privacy or decency. Little do they know that in this town there lurk two really creepy dudes who get their kicks from covering people in hot wax.

The back story of these mass murderers is so stupid and irrelevant it’s not even worth mentioning. Apparently they were born conjoined twins and when they were separated one had to lose his face. So, because of that the two became fixated with cover other people’s entire bodies with hot wax and making them into creepy human mannequins. Are you following?

The storyline feels like it was pasted together with cheap cardboard and Elmer’s glue. There’s nothing special about this film, though it is extra gory and the death scenes are splendid, that’s not even enough to attract uber gore-lovers. Paris Hilton is not a bad actress in this film (though her character, Paige, isn’t exactly going out on a limb) but the only redeeming quality to the whole movie is, yes, you do get to see Paris Hilton die. Now that’s hot. This film is trash, don’t waste your money.