House of Wax
Two Stars
by Norman Wilner, Zap2it.com
The biggest shock in "House of Wax" is that Paris Hilton is actually kind of okay in it. This is not necessarily a selling point for a horror movie.
As the second female lead in Dark Castle Entertainment's newest in-name-only update of a classic horror property -- the latest in a line that includes "House on Haunted Hill," "Thirteen Ghosts" and "Ghost Ship" -- Hilton dials down her airhead public persona convincingly enough to play an ordinary Florida college student. That's ... well, it's not hot, exactly, but it's competent. Who knew?
The star of the film is supposedly Elisha Cuthbert, best known as Kiefer Sutherland's perpetually imperiled daughter on "24;" she plays the twin sister of troubled hunk Chad Michael Murray. Accompanied by three other reasonably attractive TV actors, they're driving through the middle of nowhere on their way to a football game when they detour into Crazy Town, and the movie shudders into gear.
See, the real star of "House of Wax" -- like all of Dark Castle's pictures -- is the production design. It comes courtesy of Graham "Grace" Walker, who pulled the same duty on "Ghost Ship" -- creating an incredibly detailed environment in which people can be tortured to death, or nearly so. Most of the overlong running time of "House of Wax" consists of lovingly creepy tracking shots of Walker's latest masterwork, a town populated (almost) entirely by wax mannequins, leading to a museum made entirely of the stuff.
But screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes want nothing more than to riff on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," with fresh-faced innocents running afoul of crazy townies. Music-video director Jaume Collet-Serra doesn't bring much to the party, but he does love close-ups of wounds. Honestly, that Jiminy Glick movie was scarier.
Warner's enhanced-widescreen DVD offers a videotaped cast commentary that's probably an industry first: The four leads -- that'd be Cuthbert, Murray, Hilton and Padalecki -- sit on a couch and watch the bloopers and B-roll footage, rather than the movie. (There's no commentary for the feature, although the structure of the DVD suggests one was planned at some point.)
Additional extras include production featurettes devoted to the film's design and effects, a gag reel, a nasty alternate opening, and a brief teaser featuring producer Joel Silver on the set of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" that is, if nothing else, seriously freaking weird.
