Reviewed by Geno McGahee
I bought this movie a couple of years ago and it took a long time to finally put it into the DVD player and watch it. I found it for 3 bucks, which is why I bought it. I would never pay full price for anything featuring Paris Hilton, but in her defense, this was her urge to prove that she is just some rich chick born into money. She wants to be an actress and played the role of Paige Edwards in the 2005 horror movie HOUSE OF WAX.
The film begins with a group of youngsters on their way to a sporting event. Paige (Hilton), Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), Nick (Chad Michael Murray), Wade (Jared Padalecki), Dalton (Jon Abrahams), and Blake (Robert Ri’chard) all take this road trip. They have the jock, the prick, the good girl, and the jokester…this movie didn’t plan to make an original product. The plan was to merely capitalize on a popular genre, using what is used most of the time. There isn’t much character development here and some of the acting is abysmal.
The editor did try to save a lot of this movie by continually using the reaction footage of the other actors as Hilton speaks. You can really see how bad she is as she speaks with Cuthbert. It’s painful to watch Hilton struggle through the lines. It’s even more difficult as the viewer to watch it. This film, for having the 30 million dollar budget, didn’t spend it well on the cast, although Michael Murray and Cuthbert hold their own and make the first hour watchable.
The group camps out and spend some time taping their activities…pure filler. It was written by two people, Chad and Carey Hayes and they still couldn’t figure out character development. They just borrow what other films have done and hope the viewer doesn’t mind too much.
A truck drives up and the jerk of the group, Nick, throws a beer bottle at it, smashing one of the lights. In case you watch this movie and say: “Where did I see Nick before,” it’s probably because you saw FREAKY FRIDAY where he played the rebel/love interest of Lindsay Lohan. He wasn’t nearly as edgy as he is here and had a hard on for Jamie Lee Curtis … yuck! She looks like my cousin Neil in drag for Christ’s sake!
The truck drives off and they group goes to sleep, waking up the next morning and discovering that one of the cars has been tampered with. Carly goes looking around for help and ends up face first in a gut pile. That’s where they meet a hick, but a helpful one. She drives Carly and Wade into the small town to find a car part. That’s when it gets weird.
They meet up with Bo (Brian Van Holt), a person that first appears to be helpful but quickly turns into a bad guy, trapping the duo in the town, but Bo isn’t the only problem. Bo’s brother Vincent is on the loose and when he’s not sculpting things out of wax, he’s killing people and turning them into wax figures. The entire wax museum is full of corpse/wax dummies and the entire building is actually made out of wax.
Vincent wears a mask made out of wax because he is disfigured, as most masked killers are. They’re self conscious! He is rather neat looking and menacing and when he gets on screen, the movie moves along rather well. It is shot pretty well with some intense death scenes, but Paris Hilton could not die soon enough. She was sinking the movie every time that she was on screen. I know that she is a “name” or whatever, but if it’s not good for the end product, then it shouldn’t be used. It hurt the movie.
HOUSE OF WAX is not a bad film. The story is very good and the visuals are rather neat. The entire town being wax dummies was great and the killer was a good force, but the lack of attention to detail with the characters hurt the movie and some of the actors should have been recast. A great story, a mediocre script, and some subpar acting makes this movie forgettable, but certainly worth a watch.
Scared Stiff Rating: 5/10. Lots of potential but poor writing and bad acting hurt final product.