House of Wax (2005) Movie Review: By Adam Mast, ZBoneMan.com

House of Wax certainly bears scant resemblance to the 1953 thriller starring Vincent Price. All the two films really have in common is the title. This crappy update (which didn’t even have the common sense to go the 3-D route) doesn’t really come alive until the final half hour, and even then it’s barely worth discussing.

In this new remake from Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Productions, a group of twenty somethings (lead by 24's Elisha Cuthbert and perhaps the least talented woman in America – Paris Hilton) are sidetracked by car trouble on their way to a football game in the big city. The need for a car part causes Cuthbert and her boyfriend to poke around in a small, mysterious town populated by wax figures. Quite naturally, their lives are cast into grave peril, and before long, the dark secret of the nearly deserted town is revealed.

The first hour of this movie is excruciatingly awful. We’re not talking mere crap - we’re talking a burning case of the runs. The movie has pacing problems, introduces us to characters that have zero personality (thankfully, most of them get it by the end of the movie), and offers up cheap laughs (including repeated scenes in which Paris Hilton is caught on video taped making out with her boyfriend). It wasn’t even funny the first time. What bugged me the most however, is the fact that nothing is really happening. Literally nothing.

Once Elisha Cuthbert finally comes face to face with villain of the tale (at about the one hour point), House of Wax finally starts to generate a little bit of tension (albeit familiar tension) and in fact, there were a couple of moments that made me squirm (including a cringe-inducing bit that involves a pair of pliers).

The performances are every bit as forgettable as much of the movie. Cuthbert spends the entire film screaming and running from the bad guy. Paris Hilton’s involvement appears to be a gag of sorts. Every time she’s on screen, she’s the butt of the joke and her inevitable fate in the picture evoked big time applause from the audience. I’m curious as to whether or not Hilton was actually in on the joke when she agreed to star in the movie, or if she actually thought her character was an integral part of the plot.

Forget about the screenplay. There isn’t one. This movie is disjointed beyond belief, and the fashion in which the writers explain things, is beyond stupid. Take for instance the idea that no one knows this town exists. The half-baked explanation (offered by a couple of police officers at the end of the film) reminded me of a similar revelation in The Village, only M. Night Shyamalan wasn’t as dim-witted about it.

The saddest part of the picture is the real possibility that there might have actually been a good movie jumbled up in all this. The film’s primary villain could have been a tragic, sympathetic kind of figure in the same vein as Phantom of the Opera or Frankenstein’s monster, but the film’s insipid screenplay never allows him to be anything more than your garden variety slasher. What’s more, House of Wax appears more interested in focusing on another more obvious villain.

First time director Jaume Serra shows some terrific touches in the final act of the movie and he avoids the MTV style editing rampant in so many horror pictures as of late. There’s some outstanding make-up effects, a couple of moments that made me squirm, and a very cool bit where two of our fearless heroes try to escape a melting house. I couldn’t figure out why they weren’t being burned by the boiling wax, but suspension of disbelief is always key when watching a film like this. At any rate, there are so many holes in this House of Cards that the boiling wax thing seems pretty trivial.

House of Wax really isn’t a very good movie but there was enough visual bravado and horrific carnage in the final act to make this more effective than The Amityville Horror. This is garbage, but like most garbage, there’s usually something interesting or bizarre in the dumpster.

Grade: C

Adam Mast, ZBoneMan.com