Robert Ri’chard and Paris Hilton in House of Wax

House of Wax - Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra Certificate PG
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 (see DVD of the week) – 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.
The film begins with an 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 annoyingly 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 expensive cars 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.
When Nick’s car’s sliced fan belt keeps him at the campsite while 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.
And so the terror begins – with surprisingly effective injuries and murders and 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.
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.