 | |  |  | | Media: | HD DVD | | Country: | USA | | Studio: | Warner Home Video | | Cert: | R | | Discs: | 1 |
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Screen captures are for illustration purposes and may not originate from the item reviewed. | | House Of Wax Review| HD DVD review written by Simon Crust, published 13th March 2007 | Supplied for review by  | When I was given the chance to review House of Wax, my immediate reaction was “not the Paris Hilton one?” Such where my expectations. From the stable of Silver and Zemeckis comes another remake; but put all thought of a tortured and crippled artist out of you mind; this film is as far from the 1953 Vincent Price vehicle as chalk is from cheese. No, this 2005 remake is all about the kids. Forget subtleties of plot building and layers of horror, House of Wax doesn’t need that, pretty girls, screams and gore, that’s all that a kids horror film needs. Isn’t it?
The film opens up with one line introductions to all the main red shirts, the dizzy blond, the slightly less dizzy blond, their respective boyfriends and the hard done by brother. This motley crew are driving to a ball game, become lost and camp out in the woods. Queue, scary truck interlude, followed by ‘near naked chick’ venturing outside her tent to investigate the strange noise. (If you have a horror cliché check list now is a good time to start ticking). The morning finds one broken down vehicle, splitting the group up, one head towards the game, the other accepting a lift from ‘disturbed animal dumper’ guy to the ‘cut off ghost town’ that does not appear on any maps. It is only at this point when the titular House of Wax makes its grand entrance. Once it does a dash of mayhem ensues and all but two of the red shirts get mowed down in an inventive and somewhat gory fashion by either ‘seems nice but is actually evil’ brother or ‘masked, knife wielding psychopath but misunderstood’ brother until the final showdown where in typical Thunderbirds fashion everything gets destroyed.
So, to answer my opening question, no it isn’t. From that, albeit lazy, run down of the plot line, it is quite easy to spot the many clichés employed to try and invest in the ‘horror’. Put simply this film ought to play out like the one line script it, in fact, is. Whilst this can work, take See No Evil, or any of the Saw films as examples; here director Collet-Serra strings out the reveal of the Wax museum until we are forty five minutes into the film, in effect trying to build on the characters so we, the audience, care about their fate. We don’t, even taking this amount of time they are clearly one dimensional and there purely to get killed, so all the preamble serves to slow the pacing of the film down. Once past the half way mark thing do improve, pacing, blood and scream do serve to make it look like the horror it reports to be, even if it isn’t actually that scary or horrifying. Not to say it isn’t gruesome, a finger cut off here, a hamstring cut there, strapped to a chair and covered in wax, there are some delightfully toe curling moments, but that is just it; it seems to be all about the moment.
A big deal seems to be made of the fact that Paris Hilton ‘stars’ in this film, in actuality her part is very minor, all she really has to do is take her clothes off, and we all know she can do that. There were some delicious camcorder moments and even some night vision material that play on her internet fame, but for me her death scene was the crowning moment of the film; her on her knees with a pole in her head. The rest of the acting talent hardly have to flex their acting muscles with Elisha ‘Kim Bauer’ Cuthbert playing just about the same character. Still I enjoyed her getting her lips superglued together, call me sick go on. The rest of the male cast could be just about anyone.
I also enjoyed the symmetry with the ‘twins’ theme; it was all too obvious even before the film spelt it out (kids these days need spoon feeding after all). With the final shot of the twins being rejoined not being lost on me. Of course, there is no reason given for the behaviour of the protagonists, save a few minutes prologue, and I guess that kind of works in the films favour. One of the few things that does, because overall House of Wax is over long, clichéd and ultimately a boring film, blood and guts be dammed. As for a two storey building made entirely of wax is concerned, the less said about it the better. Still even that is preferable to the inappropriate pseudo rock songs that fill in for the score.
Movie score : 3 | | 792 word review written by Simon Crust. |  | To comment on this review, click here and post a reply.
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