House of Wax
One and One Half Stars
by Andrea Chase, killermoviereviews.com
My favorite moment in House of Wax comes when Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), our heroine in peril, is fleeing from the crazy person who is brandishing the sharp and dangerous something or other and she smacks right into the wall of the eponymous house. I like it because under the circumstances, that's what would probably happen. She's been terrorized, wounded, lost a lot of blood and had a perfectly good manicure ruined by the resident crazy of this putative franchise and, well, who wouldn't be a little discombobulated?
It sticks out as a cinematic moment because the rest of the flick is so very preposterous, which is not necessarily a hindrance to something from the slasher genre, and so very laughable, which is also not necessarily a hindrance, except that in this case, laughs were not what the filmmakers intended. It's also predictable. Silly kids stranded in the deep dark woods, drinking beer, being rowdy, and making whoopie before running afoul of the native nutcase. Mayhem and gore ensue.
In this case, it's the guy who seems to have a small town to himself and from whose house no one ever returns. No one seems to find it odd that this tiny hamlet is dominated by a humongous wax museum built in a sweeping Art Deco style. Nor does anyone comment on the fact that there in the middle of Florida and its fiercely tropical summers, it is, in fact, made entirely of wax, not just the exhibits, which are non-entities no one recognized, but the walls, floors, and furniture. Sure, there's air conditioning for the interior, the exterior staying intact? I think not.
But then, how seriously should any film be taken when it has Paris Hilton and her lacy red lingerie in a supporting role? Even if it is fun to watch the way she, in her turn, flees from the crazy person with a sort of a bobbling prance designed to not disturb her artfully disarranged hairdo. That she's given, with her vacuous reading, the one intelligent line of the film, which is wrong on so many levels, I can't begin to enumerate them here.
When gal-pal Carly decides to investigate from whence the stench invading their campground originates, it is Paris' character who asks why anyone would want to do that. But then, of course, she dutifully trots along with Carly to find the source of the smell and the ci-mentioned mayhem and gore commence.
The remainder of the film consists of how the members of our group do and don't meet their respective ends. None of them are particularly original, even the graphic detail of how one of them is turned into a wax figure fails as terror or art in the Grand Guignol style. Let me put it this way, the only thing that evinces a jump and scream reaction is the persistent jolt of very loud music that accompanies what should be terrifying just on its own, but isn't.
Which brings me to my second favorite moment in House of Wax. That would be when two of our group are desperately trying to escape from said house as it slowly burns and melts away in the only vaguely interesting effect in the entire exercise. They find themselves clawing their way through the softened wall and then squeezing out through the building's sign, which it also the logo for the film. Once again I could identify. They wanted to escape from their torture and so did I. For me, though, it was already too late. I'd wasted 105 minutes of my life. Visit the official House of Wax website.
