By Vince Palomarez | Images property of Warner Bros
The kids in House of Wax
Who here doesn't like a campy horror film? Not
me, for some reason I love the predictable scares, the gory violence and
twist ending. With horror films, I walk into them knowing to throw all logic
out the window. With that frame of mind I went to see House
of Wax, an updated "reimagining" of the 1953 horror classic
starring Vincent Price.
House of Wax
Think of every horror cliché there is and
you can probably figure out the entire plot of House of Wax by
yourself. Six college students head off on a road trip to see a big college
football game. In order to get there early enough the gang decides to take
a shortcut that doesn't even show up on GPS navigation and find themselves
stuck in a small deserted town in the middle of nowhere. Things get even
creepier as they discover that the townspeople are all dead and have been
turned into wax figures by two very demented twins.
The gang of kids is your typical horror movie group. You have your smart
hot girl (Elisha Cuthbert/Carly), brooding bad boy (Chad Michael Murray/Carly's
twin brother Nick), clean cut boyfriend (Jared Padalecki/Wade), dumb hot
girl (Paris Hilton/Paige….more on her in a bit), the jock (Robert Ri'chard/Paige's
boyfriend Blake) and of course the loser of the group (Jon Abrahams/Dalton).
Paris Hilton takes a shot in House of Wax
House of Wax starts out very slow and it's almost an hour in to
the film before it really gets started. A note to the writers: c'mon guys
this is a HORROR film…..we don't need an hour of exposition to set the story
up. It's not that hard, group of kids are going somewhere, they get stuck,
start investigating things no sane person would ever investigate and then
the psycho killer comes and violence and gore ensue. Not that hard to do.
First hour aside, the second half of House of Wax is actually quite entertaining.
You still get your standard "run away from the killers and hide in the worst
place" scenes and of course all the scares are stuff that's been done thousands
of time before but the film stays interesting until the end.
If there is one thing this horror film has, its
violence and gore. House of Wax takes advantage of its R rating
and really layers in the blood and decapitations. There is a really detailed
scene involving the "waxing" process that will gross out a few people and
some of the deaths are quite gruesome. While the comedy in this film is
not deliberate there is plenty of it especially when Paris Hilton gets to
display her honed acting skills. Her big moment against the killers is by
far the funniest part of the film.
While House of Wax has its share of flaws, they don't get in the
way and slow down the film. If anything they actually add entertainment.
When you go see this look at it as the campy film it's meant to be and laugh
along with the rest of America at Paris Hilton's attempt to be an actress.
Score:
The kids in House of Wax 
Paris Hilton takes a shot in House of Wax 
Add to Heffee!
