House of Wax

What’s the Story?

HOUSE OF WAX begins with a camping trip for friends Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and Paige (Paris Hilton), their boyfriends, gentle Wade (Jared Padalecki) and lusty Blake (Robert Ri'chard), Carly's twin brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), and Dalton (Jon Abrahams). Around the campfire, they drink, smoke cigarettes, act bored, and make out. The next morning, Carly falls into a pit of bloody, rotted fleshy muck, where a character named only "Roadkill" (Damon Herriman) tosses decayed carcasses. When Wade's Mustang mysteriously breaks down, Wade and Carly accept a ride in Roadkill's smelly pickup truck. They wind up in the small, forgotten town of Ambrose and a literal "House of Wax" (inside are wax figures, wax walls, wax furniture, wax floors), where the victims and eventual survivors are repeatedly frightened, caught in the dark, tied up, cut, and tortured.

Is It Any Good?

House of Wax is a remake of the Vincent price film in name and gimmick only; in all other respects it's a slasher film, in which pretty young people are horribly killed one by one. By the time they finally reach Ambrose, the film has already taken too long -- the first half's pacing is deliberate, as if the premise needs careful exposition, which it does not.

The climax is predictably bloody and brutal, as well as fiery (to underline the film's inconsistent religious iconography). Good twins Nick and Carly triumph over bad twins Bo and Vincent (both played by Van Holt, one with scarred, waxed over face, indication of his general sickness). Most alarming, the movie leaves open the possibility of a sequel.