January 30, 2013
Movie Review: House of Wax (2005)
I’m a little late to the show for this one, but if a movie fuels my imagination, even if it’s eight years old, I’ll review it. I felt this way about HOUSE OF WAX, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and released in 2005.
Synopsis: Six friends are traveling to a football game. They camp out for the night and plan to continue driving the next morning. But after discovering car trouble, two of them accept a stranger’s ride into the small, out-of-the-way town of Ambrose, where the main attraction is the House of Wax. But something’s strange about this town. Save for the wax figures, the town is deserted—except for two serial-killing twin brothers. The friends must fight to survive and escape from being the next exhibits. (Adapted from IMDB.)
I’ve always loved wax museums and think they’re fascinating as well as creepy. (A great combination for me.) I love the concept of not just a wax museum, not just a house, but an entire town made of wax. This village is cut off from everything and full of wax figures—any of which could be one of the deadly brothers—a situation that generates plenty of suspense. The awesome set makes for some genuinely creepy moments. And there are plenty of adrenaline-jolting scares from loud sound effects (cheap thrills, nonetheless effective).
The twins are the perfect killing franchise: one is the artist, the entertainer, and the other is the businessman, the salesman. Their only redeeming quality may be that they love their mother. The artist twin works with flesh, wax—and cutlery.
Protagonists are fraternal twins Carly and Nick Jones, played by spunky Elisha Cuthbert and brooding hottie Chad Michael Murray. The acting is unexceptional, but it’s not terrible either, except perhaps for Paris Hilton, who plays part of Paige Edwards. And other than the roadkill picker-upper (Damon Herriman), none of them is hard to look at. Even the mangled twin keeps himself hid behind a nice wax mask (Brian Van Holt). He’s a scary sonofabitch, this vicious killing artist.
There’s loads of violence and gore in this flick, but the set and cinematography are visually rich and satisfying, something I like in horror, although these can’t redeem bad logic or shitty plotting.
HOUSE OF WAX suffers from some typical stupid horror movie moments. Why chase after the smell of rotting flesh? Why split up to search in a dangerous place? Must we have an explanatory info dump at the end? And gas at the filling station is $1.19—totally threw me out of the story. (Was it ever that cheap?) 😉
Favorite parts: Paris Hilton getting pegged. (It was her finest scene.) Catching a clip of Bette Davis crooning to Victor Buono’s ivory tickling in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, which plays nightly to a theater full of wax-covered corpses. And how the film used symbolism and tied in thematic elements at the climax.
HOUSE OF WAX isn’t as brilliant as CHAINED, but all in all, it’s not a bad view. The biggest problem with a house made of wax? Like an enormous candle, it melts. I’ll leave a few surprises for your viewing pleasure.
HOUSE OF WAX was written by Charles Belden (writer credited for the original story of the 1954 Vincent Price version) and TWIN brothers Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes (screenplay). 113 minutes. Rated R.
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