Dir.
Jaume Collet-Serra , Australia /US, 2005, 113 min
Cast:
Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton
After a visually provocative campaign of billboards featuring an attractive (if apparently dead) woman dripping in wax, the UK release of House of Wax starring Paris Hilton and 24 's Elisha Cuthbert has finally come. The latest from Warner Brothers' Dark Castle production branch, this update on the slasher genre is a "reimagining" rather than a straight remake of the classic 1953 House of Wax featuring Vincent Price - and that film itself planted the seed for such horror classics as Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre . Both this film and the original make full use of the scary effects of wax - which is mostly that if you heat it up, it melts off.
Beginning with a horrific and cunningly shot 1974 flashback: a stove dripping wax from the hob, a busy family morning, a father and mother and two children - one good child, the other 'bad', needing to be strapped into his highchair which is marked with blood as are his wrists from the restraints. As the story continues, there is an unlikely twist on the old frightener - namely that there is evil lurking in a town and that evil stalks a group of annoying and annoying handsome teens.
A happy gaggle of friends - Paris Hilton and her boyfriend (Robert Ri'chard), Elisha Cuthbert, her twin brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray) and beau (Jared Padalecki) with the group goof (Jon Abrahams) - take their high-priced automobiles on what should be a shortcut to the big football game. They get stuck, it gets dark, they quarrel, drink beer and make love but not before their tidy scene is spied upon by a faceless, speechless personage in an evil. When Nick's car's sliced fan belt keeps him at the campsite which the others head off to the game, the old divide-and-conquer rule comes into play, kicked into action by the smell of rotting flesh and meeting a simple-minded, incredibly dirty country bumpkin who offers Nick and his sister a ride into town for car parts.
The deaths don't come in the sequence you'd expect, nor particularly as you would figure but the terror reigns. The injuries are diabolically nasty and effective (think Achilles tendons and super-glue to parts you'd not like glued). Carrying on this efficient scheme, the murders are surprisingly unpredictable, culminating with Paris Hilton having the showdown of her life shortly after she has shown us her famous heiress body clad in only red lace. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Stephen F Windon, the town's predatory feel seems to seep out from its very foundations. And who would have expected a building made entirely of wax? Although that boggles the mind (and the building codes) it does give the audience a knock-down, drag-out ending that is pure Zemeckis in feel and effect. Whatever you think of the horror genre - keeping in mind that horror in Britain is the film genre which has the highest percentage of financial return - this is an immaculate, modern Hollywood refiguring by former video director Jaume Collet-Serra. Will there be a sequel to this stunningly visual, unexpectedly nasty date movie? Given the ending, we can only wait for the box office figures but odds are on that this one will wax rather than wane.
Karen Krizanovich
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