House Of Wax (2005/HD-DVD)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B     Extras: C+     Film: C+

 

 

Some films are just marked for hatred by the critics, the public, the intended audience and sometimes participants in said film can cause this.  In the case of the third version of House Of Wax (2005), having mischievous socialite heir Paris Hilton as one of the six teens who take that “wrong turn” into another tourist trap as death trap had everyone with an opinion bringing their knives out.

 

The more interesting story about the production was that the respectable Academy Awards winning producer/director Robert Zemeckis had again teamed up with the wild, controversial and excessive big-budget action producer Joel Silver to make this film.  How would their sensibilities gel here?  Gothika was not the outright Horror project this is and it was back in 1999 that they remade House On Haunted Hill, now getting a belated sequel.

 

Well, Zemeckis has been moving more towards the genre since 1999, while Silver has been involved in the Matrix films and was never strictly involved with Horror, though will do any big production he can back with his usual power and hype.  For a remake of a film that first appeared as a two-strip Technicolor film in 1933, then a hit 3-D film in 1955, no gimmick was employed outright for this film, though filmmaking has become so gimmicky that they did not need to.  Subconsciously, that artifice may have turned off people in advance and overall explains why most of these retreads have bombed.

 

Some may consider Hilton’s appearance akin to Joan Crawford in William Castle’s Strait-Jacket (1964), but that is a very limited and narrow reading at best.  She is not the gimmick either.  As a matter of fact, she assimilates well into the cast that includes Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray and Brian Van Holt.  In this case, they are among a college group who finds a seemingly abandoned town that has the usual trappings (no pun intended) of gas station, empty homes, old movie theater (playing Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?) and the odd museum with “remarkably carved” waxed figures.

 

That these college educates never consider the “artistry” is really of coated corpses is part of the problem where the film is not outright stupid, but really needs to be smarter than this to work.  However, there are some moments of suspense, some interesting innerworkings of the wax world and it is a throwback to an earlier type of Horror film that the Chad Hayes/Carey W. Hayes screenplay and director Jaume Collet-Serra cannot get to integrate with the slasher cycle that began in the 1970s.  It is a 4-decade difference that their sheer inexperience cannot handle.

 

Point to for the production design, whose artifice is more typical of the genre’s past and deserves to be revisited again.

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot by Stephen Windon, A.C.S., and displays an interesting war between the natural and unnatural through the narrative intentionally and unintentionally between film and digital video.  Some of this does not look good for technical and transfer reasons, but a look of a sort of chalky wax color is prominent throughout that may be one of the reasons the film was also not well received.  It is disorienting in certain ways without making a point.

 

The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 mix is not bad, with the fidelity flat in the least horrific scenes, then kicking in nicely when attacks happen.  Unfortunately, this telegraphs when the next kill is on, yet seems to have paid off for my theatrical audience when Miss Hilton’s character met her fate, with the kind of cheers not heard since the pop singer Brittney Spears exploded in Austin Powers – Goldmember or any time a Sharon Stone gets her come-uppance.  It gives a strange twist to the old adage of giving the audience what they want.  The music by John Ottman is actually a plus, remaining cleverly subtle in ways that enhance the film.

 

Extras include bloopers with cast commentary, gag reel, alternate killing sequence for Jennifer, original theatrical trailer, Joel Silver on the location shoot, a visual effects featurette and featurette about the design of the house itself.  If nothing else, this House Of Wax is an interesting failure, but not as bad as many said.  Especially in this genre lately with much worse recycles and a tendency towards celebratory snuff mutilation, we have seen much, much worse.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo