House of Wax: Frank's Take

It’s safe to say that this glossy and contemporary take on the nostalgic horror movie House of Wax is not exactly anyone’s idea of an ideal reminiscence that represents this classic boofest from yesteryear. First-time director Jaume Collet-Serra weaves a throwaway thriller that proudly features anemic acting, cheap-minded scares, the obligatory presence of youthful periled pretty people, and a host of thinly veiled horror cliches enough to last a darn lifetime.

House of Wax (2005) Warner Brothers. 1 hour. 45 minutes. Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, Paris Hilton, Robert Ri’chard, Chad Michael Murray, Jon Abrahams, Brian Van Holt. Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra.

In short, Serra conjures up a pseudo-sizzling frightfest that’s not imaginative enough to force a dead tick off a shaggy dog’s hind leg.

Serra’s stylized yet staid loose remake of the 1953 Vincent Price version of House of Wax is the typical generic slasher flick armed with the same overwrought results: self-absorbed teens randomly getting killed because of their own lack of common sense. Well, at least Serra’s noxious narrative follows the same path of many other scarefest genres in that it doesn’t stray from the built-in formulaic premise of insufferable participants becoming convenient targets of some maniac with a twisted agenda. In this particular case, the psycho of choice here has an elaborate fetish for turning human sacrifices into overgrown candles by smothering them in mounds of wax. Hmmm…one wonders what our crackpot does for an encore?

House of Wax stars some of Hollywood’s desired young hotshots who were probably hired more for their polished profiles than they were for their ability to convey any emotional attachment with the flawed macabre material they’re asked to spice up with their notoriety. Diamond-loving diva and publicity-seeking princess Paris Hilton is part of this ensemble and no doubt the gimmicky notion of including her is an effort to make House of Wax a distinctive spectacle beyond the obvious boundaries of the campy gore the film awkwardly promotes. Among the other notable teen scene crowd that parades around in this clunky creepfest are Elisha Cuthbert (from television’s 24), Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padalecki (formerly of TV’s Gilmore Girls), Jon Abrahams and Robert Ri’chard.< br>

The storyline has a bunch of Floridian college-age kids traveling to Louisiana for the highly touted college football game. Inevitably, they would experience some dubious car-related problems along the way thus forcing the gang to camp out for the evening in a shady remote setting. Carly (Cuthbert) and her precious boyfriend Wade (Padalecki) are paired up with another couple in promiscuous pal Paige (Hilton) and her ebony significant other Blake (Ri’chard). Also, Carly has her feisty sibling Nick (Murray) and his best buddy Dalton (Abrahams) accompanying them on this unassumingly frightening field trip.

Soon, the sinister town and its vulnerable residents will take on a curious fear factor for the visiting sextet. For starters, the tip off of suspicious occurrences is evident when the whole surroundings are encapsulated in streams of wax. Realizing that they’re standing in the middle of a glorified wax museum that is the whole general area, the kids look to escape their immediate dilemma. In true sensationalistic fashion, the pack is being eliminated as they try to duck and dodge their own tragic waxing-induced ending.

There’s not too much muster to House of Wax although audiences will buy into the eerie CGI waxy special effects. Serra and the film’s screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes seem to toil over the trivial necessities of a toothless haunting thriller that lingers on and on without once serving up an interesting and animated script. Just what justifies the movie’s outlandishly skimpy machinations anyway?

The performances are horrendously bad and the movie surprisingly doesn’t even provide a decent jolt in the way these clueless individuals are led to their slaughtering. If the film’s primary function is to shake and shock the audience then at least it should have the right amount of colorful hubris to eradicate its endangered protagonists. All in all, House of Wax doesn’t even take the time to distinguish its perfunctory death scenes from any other chop-and-dice flicks that showcases the same run-of-the-mill demises.

From the woefully stilted dialogue to the ridiculously wooden presentation of the familiar goings-on of an arbitrary goose bump chiller, House of Wax is a conventionally strained and sluggish suspense piece that will automatically follow a tedious path of other slight and forgettable menacing mediocre scare tactic sessions.

Despite hiring the ubiquitous and pampered Paris Hilton as a novelty act in an effort to boost this flaccid skin-crawling saga, the payoff is still quite minimal. Somehow dipping unsuspecting victims into a pool of wax has never been so boringly anti-climactic.

Frank Ochieng

(c) Frank Ochieng 2005

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