Melted cheese

Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre May 30, 2005

House of Wax
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes
Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton
R13/ 113 minutes
Warner Brothers/ Village Roadshow/ Dark Castle
Now showing

Paris Hilton seduces her boyfriend in a scene that would remind some people of her celebrated video scandal. That might have been an inside joke for the filmmakers to include such a scene, but it’s those small incidents in the movie which may leave audiences of House of Wax with a bad aftertaste.

Like many recent Hollywood releases, House of Wax is a re-”imagining” of an old classic – this time the 1953 thriller by Andrè de Toth starring horror movie legend Vincent Price. The new movie has little similarity with the original, which was one of the first successful 3D movies produced by a studio (Warner Brothers.) The new version is the usual teen slasher movie, except that it has more than the usual serving of dismembered body parts.

In House of Wax, six teenage friends traveling to a college football championship game spend the night camped in a wooded area away from the highway. During the night, a trucker, presumably a resident of the area, disturbs the group. In the morning they find one of their cars tampered with.

The next day two of the teens – Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) look for replacement parts in the nearest town, while the others decide to head straight to the football game. Carly and Wade find the small silent town of Ambrose, whose main attraction is a wax museum called Trudy’s House of Wax. Needless to say they uncover the town and the museum’s dark, twisted secrets, endangering their lives as well as those of their friends.

Technically speaking, House of Wax is well made and competently assembled. This is not surprising for teen slasher movies which are usually vehicles for launching the big-screen debuts of new stars (compared to the way we do it here, where teen stars are mostly introduced in love teams). Even performances are competent, surprising even to see Paris Hilton perform enough that is required from her role.

The premise isn’t new – there’s a sure permutation of “mysterious town with a maniac” from time to time. Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra’s movie debut can be considered more than satisfactory. As far as popcorn entertainment is concerned, House of Wax is not too bad.

What I’m really worried about isn’t the cheesy corny twins-battle-twins twist in the narrative nor is it with Paris Hilton’s cat-walking (though in one scene, she may have earned the distinction of making the most fashionable scared run in movie history.)

My concern stems from what seem to be the ever-increasingly violent thrillers which emerge from Hollywood’s factories. Slasher flicks have existed for quite some time now and indeed reached new cinematic heights with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960. The disturbing trend (or seeming trend) is to push the limits of acceptable violence on screen.

There seems to be an absolute objective to completely desensitize the audience, trivializing violence and to a certain degree making it entertaining. At some point in the press screening, some members of the audience cheered to see Paris Hilton’s character get skewered in her final scene. While there may be general dislike for the infamous heiress, in no way does she humanely deserve such reaction. As if it is enjoyable to see someone get killed. That’s disturbing.

I can’t fathom the day we are completely desensitized by on-screen violence, when what makes us human is melted away and we’ve become mannequins dead under the skin.