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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 12.98%
Worth A Look: 24.43%
Average: 3.05%
Pretty Bad: 31.3%
Total Crap: 28.24%
11 reviews, 65 user ratings
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| House of Wax (2005) |
by Lybarger
"Melts in your brain, not in your hand (or is that it melts your brain?)"
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When Disney’s Hollywood Pictures division was in existence, people noticed that the logo was no guarantee of quality. When the Sphinx appeared before the opening credits, detractors quipped, “If it’s the Sphinx, it probably stinks.” The same can be said for the Dark Castle name plate.The folks behind that label have a knack for wasting talented actors like Tony Shalhoub and for insulting viewers at every turn. The company takes classic horror titles and updates them for less intelligent audiences or makes “original” films like “Gothika” that suck just as badly. In short, “If it’s the Castle, expect a hassle.”
In the case of “House of Wax,” they loosely rework the Vincent Price 1953 chiller into a tedious contemporary slasher devoid of suspense or scares. Verteran music video director and amateur feature director Juame Serra helms a cast of moonlighting TV actors who portray the stupidest people in screen history.
Smart characters make for better thrillers. Part of the reason most Hitchcock movies or even slashers like “Halloween” and “Scream” work is that their protagonists did everything within reason to avoid danger, but it still surfaced.
The leads in “House of Wax,” however, leap into dire situations head first. For example, most people would probably decline an offer to ride in a pickup driven by a redneck straight out of “Deliverance.” He’s just used his vehicle to dump road kill deer into a makeshift landfill.
In “House of Wax,” however, our heroes Carly Jones (Elisha Cuthbert, from “24”) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) happily accept a ride and are surprised when things go wrong.
This is only one example of a stupidity that permeates the film. Our Rhodes Scholarship team winds up in a nearly vacant town because they camp out in the words miles from the stadium before a big football game.
Nothing wrong with camping, but do these folks really need to do that and deal with scalpers when a simple call to Ticketmaster might have been simpler? Hey, one of them is played by Paris Hilton, and chances are she can afford the service charges.
Also, don’t these folks know that drinking beer, camping out or having sex is the surest way to become knife bait? As “House of Wax” progresses, viewers halfway expect Jamie Kennedy to show up and lay out the survival rules like he did in “Scream.” Then again, that probably wouldn’t do any good because these folks would be too dim to heed his advice. They should also beware of any town where gasoline still sells for $1.19 a gallon.
To be fair to Serra and others involved, the title structure is actually pretty intriguing. Not only are the statues made of wax, but the entire structure is made from it. This doesn’t make much sense (the movie’s supposedly set in Louisiana, where such a building would melt to the ground in seconds during the summer). As fire engulfs the building at the end, the film’s only decent visuals occur. The characters have to run for their their lives as even the floor itself melts below their feet. Of course, these folks are dumb enough to run up the stairs as the House of Wax is giving way.
The plot twists are obvious, so in many ways this film is actually a step down from Paris Hilton’s famous video offering. There’s no use in hiding spoilers because there are no surprises here. Someone needs to tell Serra and his cohorts that gore and chills are not synonymous. The pervasive sadism makes you wonder if they are more like the villains than they let on. I’d hate to eat a dinner prepared by these jokers because the dish might be somebody I care about.The only other highlight in this film is watching Hilton running for her life in her uncomfortable looking undies. Her 15 minutes must be coming to an end because her demise had my audience cheering. Maybe they were upset because she wasn’t naked.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=12045&reviewer=382
originally posted: 05/08/05 07:35:58
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Tribeca Film Festival For more in the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival series, click here.
Horror Remakes: For more in the Horror Remakes series, click here.
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USA
06-May-2005 (R)
DVD: 25-Oct-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
14-Jul-2005
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