Movie Reviews

House of Wax

16 July 2005

When House of Wax was filming at the Gold Coast last year, actors Elisha Cuthbert (best-known for 24) and Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill) told me earnestly that this film provided a new, blindingly original angle to the slasher film genre. While I didn’t exactly believe them, they gave me reasonably high expectations.

            As it turns out, House of Wax isn’t so bad. It’s a superior teen slasher movie, which is a bit like praising Deep Throat for being a superior porn flick (or so I’ve been told), or Punch Drunk Love for being a superior Adam Sandler movie. Many of the horror genre’s regular themes (read “clichés”) are here, from the eerie, deserted town to maniacs who slice the characters to death, one by one. This, of course, provides most of the fun: working out who will die next, who will survive, and why these nutters never just use a gun. Like the Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, it features an attractive and popular young cast whom (as if to prove the cheapness of the genre) we have already seen regularly on television, free of charge. Along with Cuthbert and Murray (who play twins, if you can believe that), it includes Jared Padalecki (Gilmore Girls) and the indescribable Paris Hilton.

            In other ways, however, it diverges from most slash-and-gore films. For a start, these characters are not dumb teenagers, but, er, dumb 20-somethings. It also takes longer to unravel, so that nobody is murdered until well into the film. This might make some of the intended audience restless, but it actually makes a better film, leading to a more effective climax. Though it shares its title with the 1953 Vincent Price classic, the two films have nothing in common, apart from the concept of making wax dummies out of real people.

            With Hilton, you could unkindly say that this has already happened. But you know what? She gives the best (or best-suited) performance! Cuthbert is a far better actor, but like most of the cast, she takes the whole thing so darn seriously. Hilton, out of necessity, is good at self-parody. In a movie like this, that’s the way to play it.