“House of Wax” (2005) falls on the right side of that line with horror movies where you generally know what’s going to happen. On one side of the line, you’re not into the spirit of it, and the stupidity is a turn-off. On the other side, you get into it despite recognizing the overwhelming implausibility.
In his first major film of what would become a respectable career, director Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan,” “The Shallows”) blends the creepy premise of Vincent Price’s 1953 “House of Wax” with the backwoods awkwardness of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Wrong Turn.”
Poor Elisha, targeted by a nutjob again
The events, logistics and architecture aren’t realistic, but they steadily increase in weirdness, and it becomes hard to look away. At first, the movie is done on the cheap, shot on a backlot representing a town that seems lifeless yet inexplicably boasts a tourist-trap wax museum.
“House of Wax” (2005)
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Writers: Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes (screenplay); Charles Belden (story)
Stars: Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt
The special effects go wild later. If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like for everything around you to be susceptible to melting, you get to see it, and it’s quite cool (or hot, as it were).
“House of Wax” starts, somewhat unfortunately, with that Naughties thing wherein a group of friends acts more like enemies. For a while I thought Jared Padalecki and Chad Michael Murray had exchanged fighting over Alexis Bledel for fighting over Elisha Cuthbert. Dialing into the narrative more closely, I realized Murray plays Cuthbert’s overprotective brother.
Also in this group of “Texas Chain Saw”-esque road trippers (they’re vaguely traveling to a football game) is Paris Hilton, who surprisingly does not portray a wax figure. If running around in your underwear is a type of acting, I can’t say she’s bad at it.
The wardrobe team was perhaps inspired by Cuthbert’s “24” Season 2 getup, as she again dons a men’s tank top to do what’s required at least once by every 20-something Aughts actor: to be chased and grimed up in a slasher movie.
Town of wackos
Nothing is necessarily surprising in “House of Wax,” but it’s watchable in a train-wreck way when going through beats such as a redneck trucker (Damon Herriman) offering to drive the young people into town to pick up a replacement fan belt. C’mon, give him a chance, I think. Maybe he’s merely odd, not evil.
Chad and Carey W. Hayes, working from the 1953 story by Charles Belden, ramp up the nutso mythology, not only with the artistic creation of wax figures but also with the backstory of how and why the artists got into this.
Being the Naughties, some scenes are almost torture porn, and others are simply wiggins-inducing, and overall the film is equal parts goofy and pulse-pounding. Indeed, the implausibility remains so high that I felt sorry for the actors playing the cops at the end: having to pretend to be authority figures who missed this brazen insanity in their own backyard. (The film does hang a lampshade on this via dialog, at least.)
Still, if the creepiness of people seeming dead but not quite fitting that status – perhaps inspired by the Old Man in “Texas Chain Saw” – is your jam, “House of Wax” should have enough horror wackiness for you.