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House of Wax (Jaume Collet-Serra)
"Admit It, You Wanted To See Hilton Die Too"
A group of friends on their way to a college football game falls prey to a pair of murderous brothers in an abandoned small town. They discover that the brothers have expanded upon the area's main attraction... the House of Wax. And created an entire town filled with the wax-coated corpses of unlucky visitors. Now the group must find a way out before they too become permanent exhibits in the House of Wax...
Chalk up another film for the remake list of classic horror movies. Although in this installment, there is a lack of one, Vincent Price. Instead we get who todays teenagers think are hot. If Paris Hilton running across the screen in her underwear is what hollywood deems as a horror movie these days, then we are in trouble.
When you think of a teen horror movie you think of a bunch of kids who get lost and are killed by a pyscho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1,000 corpses and so on. House of Wax is no different in that sense of the word, but it does stand out from the rest of the bunch. Serra is able to keep suspense throughout this film, whereas other seem to fizzle out.
Wax doesn't throw horror at us from the start, instead it takes a good 30 some odd minutes before we get the scares that we would expect. Serra manages to slowly get the creepy feeling into the viewer, as we see the town and get the errie feeling from that very moment we see it.
Chad Micheal Murray and Elisha Cuthbert lead the cast in every sense of the word, as they are the only watchable characters. Jon Abrahams has too little screen time to make an impression. Of course Paris Hilton nails the role perfectly, because she is infact that in real life, so there is no stretch for her. For us, or at least speaking for myself, she was only eye-candy. When she bites the dust, and eventually they all do, minus the leads (come on it's a horror movie, you had to see it coming) I got a warm feeling of satisfaction.
The one villian, Vincent, obvious ode to Price, was quite creepy, with his long black hair and wax face. A Micheal Myers type feel to it, for the new wave of horror movies.
The gore is here and it is good, we actually see it up on the screen. Too many horror movies feel the need to cut away right before and only show the characters reaction, in order to get the PG-13...here we get Serra using the R title to it's extent.
The film tries to hard with it's "shocking" ending, but one can see it coming from the very start, which brings the film down because it does take itself seriously. If it had a little bit more fun with itself, then the camp could have settled in and we would have enjoyed ourselves a lot more.
The climax of the film has the House of Wax melting with our killers and teen like characters in it. I was impressed with the whole execution of it, it worked really well while keeping the suspense and horror. Although in the end, Wax just passes by as another teen remake of an old classic horror film, this will be forgotten, even if it's better then the trash that it's forgotten with.
5.5/10
"Admit It, You Wanted To See Hilton Die Too"
A group of friends on their way to a college football game falls prey to a pair of murderous brothers in an abandoned small town. They discover that the brothers have expanded upon the area's main attraction... the House of Wax. And created an entire town filled with the wax-coated corpses of unlucky visitors. Now the group must find a way out before they too become permanent exhibits in the House of Wax...
Chalk up another film for the remake list of classic horror movies. Although in this installment, there is a lack of one, Vincent Price. Instead we get who todays teenagers think are hot. If Paris Hilton running across the screen in her underwear is what hollywood deems as a horror movie these days, then we are in trouble.
When you think of a teen horror movie you think of a bunch of kids who get lost and are killed by a pyscho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1,000 corpses and so on. House of Wax is no different in that sense of the word, but it does stand out from the rest of the bunch. Serra is able to keep suspense throughout this film, whereas other seem to fizzle out.
Wax doesn't throw horror at us from the start, instead it takes a good 30 some odd minutes before we get the scares that we would expect. Serra manages to slowly get the creepy feeling into the viewer, as we see the town and get the errie feeling from that very moment we see it.
Chad Micheal Murray and Elisha Cuthbert lead the cast in every sense of the word, as they are the only watchable characters. Jon Abrahams has too little screen time to make an impression. Of course Paris Hilton nails the role perfectly, because she is infact that in real life, so there is no stretch for her. For us, or at least speaking for myself, she was only eye-candy. When she bites the dust, and eventually they all do, minus the leads (come on it's a horror movie, you had to see it coming) I got a warm feeling of satisfaction.
The one villian, Vincent, obvious ode to Price, was quite creepy, with his long black hair and wax face. A Micheal Myers type feel to it, for the new wave of horror movies.
The gore is here and it is good, we actually see it up on the screen. Too many horror movies feel the need to cut away right before and only show the characters reaction, in order to get the PG-13...here we get Serra using the R title to it's extent.
The film tries to hard with it's "shocking" ending, but one can see it coming from the very start, which brings the film down because it does take itself seriously. If it had a little bit more fun with itself, then the camp could have settled in and we would have enjoyed ourselves a lot more.
The climax of the film has the House of Wax melting with our killers and teen like characters in it. I was impressed with the whole execution of it, it worked really well while keeping the suspense and horror. Although in the end, Wax just passes by as another teen remake of an old classic horror film, this will be forgotten, even if it's better then the trash that it's forgotten with.
5.5/10