Somehow of late, I’ve become addicted to horror movies. May be my adrenaline levels are just not challenged up to the mark or whatever. Recently I went to Universal Studios and believe me when everyone around me were screaming on giant roller coaster rides, here I was sitting quiet, asking myself, ’’what is all the fuss about?’’ So in my quest to seek higher and scarier thrills, I set out to see this supposedly extreme, slick horror story.
( Premature PS: Planning to do some para sailing in Miami this month end)
Unlike the Vincent Price classic, this movie doesn’t focus on the killer but the victims, another whose car breaks down on a remote road in the middle of nowhere. As soon as one utters the perilous phrase, ’’Let’s split up, ’’ you know they will die one by one via increasingly grisly executions. The flick opens with brief scene showing us that our eventual bad guys were two brothers brought up rather sadistically by the curator of a wax museum. Then we meet our ditzy crew of college coeds heading out to a football game somewhere in Louisiana. When they attempt a shortcut through some dirt roads, things begin to go awry.
The initial portions of the movie are rather long. The director has taken all his time and also borrowed some time off George Bush’s vacation to introduce the characters.
Question: Why is a horror movie so scary?
Answer: You expect things to go according to logic, but it doesn’t.
So following the wisdom, you expect horror in a horror movie, going by logic, right? And lo! You are in for a surprise, for the initial 40 minutes or so, there are no signs of horror or scare.
The only horror that can be identified if of course ’’PARIS HILTON’’ in the movie
Now, I’ve heard of the phrase ’’Dumb Blonde’’ many times and have often rebuked the statement. But here is a female, all out to prove me wrong.
The friends include two actresses you’ll recognize, Hilton and Elisha Cuthbert from ’’24, ’’ then a bunch of people you’ll sort of, kinda recognize. There’s the guy from ’’Coach Carter, ’’ the guy with three names from ’’One Tree Hill, ’’ the guy from ’’Gilmore Girls’’ and the goofy brother from ’’Meet the Parents.’’ Names are overrated.
Now the story The House of Wax starts off with a bunch of gorgeous but IQ-challenged College kids hopping into a car and going on road trip (horror movie cliché No.1) to one of the biggest college football games of the year. Things take a turn for the worse for Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and Paige (Paris Hilton) when the group decides to camp out for the night (Usual formulae of a horror movie) before heading to the game.
A confrontation with a mysterious trucker at the camp site (horror movie cliché No. 2) leaves everyone spooked, and Carly has her hands full trying to keep the peace between her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) and her hot-headed brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), neither of whom can stand the other (horror movie cliché No. 3). They wake up the next morning to find that their car might have been deliberately tampered with (horror movie cliché No. 4). At the risk of being left stranded, they accept a creepy, toothless local’s invitation for a ride (horror movie cliché No. 5) into Ambrose, the only town for miles. Once there, they are drawn to Ambrose’s main attraction: Trudy’s House of Wax, which is filled with remarkably life-like sculptures.
But as they soon discover, there is a shocking reason the exhibits look so real (horror movie cliché No. 6). These characters are real drips; they decide to split up and explore (horror movie cliché No. 7), and when they find there’s a killer on the loose (horror movie cliché No. 8), they either run and hide upstairs (horror movie cliché No. 9) or down in dark basements (horror movie cliché No. 10). So, you’ve gathered the movie has every horror movie cliché in the book? Yep, you’d be right, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun movie. Fun, that is, if the first half hour of the film has not either put you to sleep or made you get up and sneak into another movie. How the friends (surviving friends and surviving audience) come out of the psychopath’s clutches forms the rest of the story.
Plus points The final sequence with the wax house on fire is a remarkable piece of filmmaking. It really gets your heart racing and pulls you to the brink of falling over from your seat. Brian Van Holt as the Siamese twin psychopath has done
a very good job. The cinematography is excellent in parts but in parts it is irritating.
Minus points Paris Hilton: She ought to reconsider her status as a sex symbol, however. When I saw ’’House of Wax, ’’ the audience cheered her gruesome death and giggled at her strip tease act.
Story logic: A story can be a fiction work with no questions asked or a current one where logic is connected. But this story is supposed to be a current story, which does no explanation as to how an abandoned town with a huge house of wax and filled with around 100 dead people could escape law authorities attention. Did no cop trace the death of such a huge number of missing people? Also the story is too cliched.
Screenplay: The initial part of the story takes too much time in unnecessarily explaining the characters and proceeds for quite a while doing that. By this time you start to wonder if this is a horror movie at all.
On the whole a dull, once watchable affair