House of Wax (2005) [REVIEW]

GO AHEAD ASSHOLES, START TALKING SHIT RIGHT NOW. I’m sure you’re saying, “LOL this movie is sooooo bad even though I have never seen it LOL,” but you can all shut RIGHT the fuck up. I will admit that the main reason I saw this movie was because when it came out, a lot of people had a lot of confused feelings about Paris Hilton, and I was one of them. It was that old “Is she famous for being hot or is she hot because she’s famous” conundrums, AND I WANTED ANSWERS! After watching (and for some of you, after reading), I knew that this movie was worth my hard-earned $10 and years later, yes, this movie was still worth my $10. Granted, I spend $10 on way dumber stuff, but you get my point! So please, try to cast aside any sort of judgement you had of this movie until AFTER I describe the plot in great detail, and you’ll understand why it wasn’t the worst movie of all time.

Fun Fact: Supposedly this entire bed was made out of peanut butter! I hope a dog got to eat it when they were done.

The opening of the movie shows a woman making a wax face while her two kids act like shitheads. Correction, one kid sits there quietly eating his breakfast, the other is such a shithead that he needs to be strapped down to his highchair. Cut to present day, and we see a bunch of douchebag college kids going to some football game. We have Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), who’s a small town girl with big city dreams, her brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), who has a criminal record, Carly’s friend Paige (Paris Hilton), who’s basically just Paris Hilton, and a few other stereotypical characters. They camp on their way there and have an encounter with a creepy truck that Nick throws a bottle at, causing the truck to leave. When they wake up from camping the next day, they find that one of their cars is broken, so Carly and her boyfriend hitchhike to the nearest town. Anything weird about the town? IT’S A WHOLE TOWN MADE OF WAX! Well, not ENTIRELY out of wax, but some of the buildings are. They find a mechanic (Brian Van Holt) in the town and he offers to help them, but while exploring one of the houses, Carly’s boyfriend is assaulted and knocked out! Oh no! We then see a creepy weirdo turning Carly’s boyfriend’s body into one of the wax figures that populates the town! Ahhhhh!!!

Oh shit bro, your face fell off.

Eventually, Nick and another stereotypical character go in search of Carly and her boyfriend and when they get to the town, they find that the boyfriend has been turned into one of the wax figures, but the stereotype character is killed before he can do anything. The mechanic takes Carly captive, and we learn that him and his brother, the one doing the violent acts, are the two boys from the beginning of the movie! The other brother, who wears a wax mask, kills Paris Hilton and her boyfriend, and back in town, Nick tries to rescue Carly. There are a few scenes of running around and hiding before all four of these characters find their way back to the titular house of wax and when a fire gets started, the house starts to melt. Nick and Carly have the bright idea to go UP the stairs of a melting house, and they are eventually able to kill both brothers and escape. When the police come to their rescue, the police mention how there were actually three brothers, and that’s when the camera shows the driver who picked up Carly and brought her to the town of wax in the first place. SEQUEL?! Probably not.

And the irony of it all is that you’re holding the object that kills you! Oh my god!

I guess that broken down to those base plot elements, there’s really nothing that special about this movie. Luckily, they had some sick fucks coming up with the violence in the movie that makes it incredibly enjoyable. First of all, let me point out that the DVD includes the original opening sequence which involves the mechanic helping a woman whose car has broken down. He kind of taunts and teases her by driving towards and away from her, and he ultimately ends up driving straight at her, grabbing her by the head and dragging her along the truck, AND THROWS HER THROUGH HER GODDAMNED WINDSHIELD. WHY WOULD YOU CUT THIS FROM THE MOVIE?! IT WAS AMAZING! In addition to shit like that, you have a scene where a character tries to save his friend from wax, only to accidentally peel the skin off of his face, or the scene where a different character tries to help a DIFFERENT friend encased in wax, only to accidentally RIP HIS WHOLE FUCKING HEAD OFF, or the scene where Paris Hilton is killed by a sharpened pipe being tossed through her head, which she then falls forward onto à la Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, or the scene where Elisha Cuthbert has her mouth superglued shut to keep quiet and when she tries to escape through a sewer grate, has the tips of her finger cut off by the mechanic as he calmly talks to her brother. Add to that the multiple scenes of decayed bodies being exposed through the wax once bludgeoned or any other method of destruction, it’s all just silly and brutal enough to work.

You’re gonna need a lot of Burt’s Bees, Ms. Cuthbert.

Okay okay, it has some good violence and special effects, but can that really save this piece of shit? I didn’t get too much into the details of the brothers, but the backstory actually is kind of interesting. You’d assume that the brother who had to be strapped down as a kid was the one who grew up to be the sadistic killer, but by the end of the film, we realize it’s the opposite of that. The boys were born as conjoined twins, attached at the head, but thanks to surgery, they were separated. Unfortunately, one brother was facially disfigured, and from youth, his face was covered, which is why we saw the one brother always wearing a mask. It was nice to see the filmmakers putting SOME backstory into the characters, and I think it was this style that probably influenced a movie like the remake of Black Christmas a year after this movie came out. If you’ve seen this movie, I’m sure you can admit that it has its cheesy moments, but is still pretty entertaining, and if you’ve never seen it, the lame acting and ridiculous violence make it a fun movie to watch with friends. Also, both Deftones and Interpol have songs on the soundtrack, and if that doesn’t teleport you back to 2005, I don’t know what will.

Wolfman Moon Scale