Review
HOUSE OF WAX
Starring Paris Hilton, Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray
Directed by
Opens Friday, May 6
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Recalling the gruesome, swift and nauseating recent remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, House of Wax is a fine popcorn screamer.
Giving the audience what they so desperately want – lots of blood and Paris Hilton running from a psychotic serial killer in her skivvies – this remake of Vincent Price’s 1953 spookfest works up to a wildly entertaining finale in which the titular material is perfectly milked for all of its horrific, dangerous and beautiful cinematic power. While the film may stumble on the way, it’s good, nasty celluloid.
Putting a twist on the original, House of Wax depicts its crazed wax artist as a serial killer named Vincent, sculpting his masterpieces not out of corpses but living human beings. Vincent incapacitates his victims and then covers them with wax to create a sort of living doll.
Since few things are more frightening than backwater hicks when it comes to horror movies, House of Wax is rife with them. Though the film’s vermin-ridden Louisiana town isn’t as grotesque as the in-bred Texas hamlet where Leatherface and his clan resided, there’s plenty of nastiness in the swampy surroundings.
After a group of teens get waylaid en route to a football game in Baton Rouge, they’re lured into a desolate and strange town where the main attraction is the long-shuttered House of Wax. As the teens begin falling prey to the killer, the twin brother-sister pair, played by Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray, start fighting back.
The most notable addition to the cast is Hilton, who is making her big-screen debut. Thankfully, Hilton’s lines are kept to a minimum while her real-life persona is milked for most of its potential – mocking her other screen role, opposite her ex-boyfriend in their infamous homemade sex video, the heiress keeps unwittingly being videotaped by another teen on the trip. And, without ruining any surprises, Hilton’s onscreen demise is sure to satisfy fans who find her hard to like.
House of Wax, which is filled with creepier versions of already creepy wax figures, skilfully incorporates its real stars into the picture. As Cuthbert and Michael Murray run around the deserted town, appropriately being upstaged by the inanimate wax dummies that surround them, House of Wax does a fine job of bringing together past and present eras, and film genres, to produce an adroit B-movie that recalls slasher flicks and campy zombie movies. |
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