31 Days of Horror- Day 21: House of Wax (2005)

(dir. Jaume Collet-Serra)

Warner Bros.

After car problems strand a group of friends on their way to a football game in Louisiana, they find their way to a mysterious small-town that sits under the shadow of a wax museum with sinister secrets.

When House of Wax came out in 2005 I dismissed it. This was largely in part because of all the attention Paris Hilton was receiving for it, and I figured anything with her in a main role couldn’t be quality. I’m sure I’m not the only one who dismissed House of Wax on those merits and then simply forgot about it. Well, I was damn wrong. House of Wax is a fuckin’ blast that’s reminiscent of the drive-in films of an earlier era. It, along with Friday the 13^th (2009), may be the closest film to capturing the spirit of 80s slasher fare. While it shares its name with a 1953 Vincent Price film, which was itself a remake of a 1933 film, Collet-Serra’s film has an entirely different plot. It actually shares a lot in common with the 1979 film, Tourist Trap, which I may cover later this month for comparison’s sake. While House of Wax isn’t revolutionary, it does hit all the right spots that nostalgic horror fans enjoy. It’s incredibly gory, expertly paced, narratively competent, and features a cast of attractive young 20-somethings. Oh, and Paris Hilton, isn’t any more grating than any other poorly acted character from the numerous slasher films over the years.

While Collet-Serra is carving out a name for himself with action movies, House of Wax and his later horror film, Orphan are the strongest showcases of his talents. Like his later horror film, House of Wax is so well crafted in terms of space. The abandoned town that Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padelecki) find themselves in perfectly marries dwindling sunlight and shadow to create a space in which we’re not quite sure what we’re seeing. While the twist in this film isn’t as great as Orphan, Collet-Serra displays a great poker face while providing just the right hints to lead us into darkness. The wax museum itself, composed entirely out of wax, is a thing of macabre beauty, and once the secrets of the museum are revealed, the wax figures take on new dimensions and their facial expressions of joy become tinged with pain. Additionally, the film makes good use of its slasher figure, giving him a kind of tortured artist, Phantom of the Opera mystique set loose inside a neo-Southern Gothic. There’s a layer of sweat and grime in the film that I sorely miss from Collet-Serra’s later works. While the film obviously pushes up against the torture porn explosion of the early 2000s (Saw was released the year before) and makes use of that within some of its scenes, House of Wax manages to marry the elements of old and new shock and exploitation horror better than most films of the time that were sold on their remake factor.

Scare Factor: 3/5 House of Wax is an ode to 80s horror, with some stomach-churning scenes of gore and horror. Whatever it lacks in originality, it makes up for in scene construction, production design, and the sense that everyone involved in this film is having the time of their lives.