House of Wax (2005 film)

House of Wax
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by	Chad Hayes Carey Hayes
Based on	The Wax Works by Charles S. Belden
Produced by	Joel Silver Robert Zemeckis Susan Levin
Starring	Elisha Cuthbert Chad Michael Murray Brian Van Holt Paris Hilton Jared Padalecki Jon Abrahams Robert Ri'chard
Cinematography	Stephen F. Windon
Edited by	Joel Negron
Music by	John Ottman
Production companies	Village Roadshow Pictures Dark Castle Entertainment
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date	April 30, 2005 (2005-04-30) (Tribeca) May 6, 2005 (2005-05-06) (United States) July 14, 2005 (2005-07-14) (Australia)
Running time	113 minutes[1]
Countries	United States Australia
Language	English
Budget	$40 million[2]
Box office	$70.1 million[3]

House of Wax is a 2005 slasher film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by Charles Belden, Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes, based on a story by Belden. The film stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt in a dual role, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams and Robert Ri'chard. It is a loose remake of the 1953 film of the same name, itself a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum.^[4]

House of Wax premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in United States theaters on May 6, 2005, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film grossed over $70 million worldwide and received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticized its lack of originality, screenplay and characters, but praised the performances and atmosphere.

Plot[]

Carly Jones, her brother Nick, and their friends Wade Felton, Paige Edwards, Blake Johnson, and Dalton Chapman are on their way to a football game in Louisiana. The night before the game, they camp in a field. A stranger in a pickup truck arrives, then leaves when Nick smashes one of his headlights. The next morning, Wade discovers that his car's fan belt is broken and Carly falls into a pit of rotting animal carcasses. After rescuing her, the group meet Lester, who drives Carly and Wade to the nearby town of Ambrose for a new fan belt while the rest head to the football game.

Carly and Wade arrive in Ambrose, which is virtually a ghost town. At the local church, they find a funeral in progress and meet Bo, who offers to sell them a fan belt after the funeral. While waiting, they visit "Trudy's House of Wax", a wax museum which is itself made of wax and the central feature of the town. They follow Bo to his house to get the fan belt, where Bo's twin brother Vincent, who wears a wax mask to cover his facial disfigurement from when the twins were once conjoined, cripples Wade and knocks him unconscious. Carly notices Bo's truck has a broken headlight and realizes that he was the one who visited the campsite. Bo abducts Carly, restraining her in the gas station cellar and gluing her lips shut. Meanwhile, Vincent covers Wade's body in molten wax.

Realizing they will not arrive at the game in time, Paige and Blake return to the campsite while Nick and Dalton look for Carly and Wade in the town. When Carly tries to alert Nick, Bo cuts off her finger tip but she tears her lips apart and screams for help. Nick fends off Bo and frees Carly while Dalton finds Wade, who is unable to move in his wax coating. Dalton tries to free Wade by peeling off the wax from his face, inadvertently removing his skin in the process. Vincent then ambushes Dalton as he slashes off a section of Wade's face, making him die instantly from shock, before chasing, cornering and finally decapitating Dalton. Carly and Nick realize the wax figures are actually the wax-coated corpses of visitors lured into town; Bo had been manipulating Vincent into murdering people to make more realistic wax figures.

Vincent kills Blake at the campsite and chases Paige into an abandoned sugar mill, where he throws a metal pipe through her forehead, killing her. Bo and Vincent return to chase Carly and Nick into the House of Wax. Nick unintentionally starts a massive fire in the museum's workshop, causing it and its figures to start melting. Re-encountering Bo, he and Nick battle, culminating in the latter being stabbed in the leg before Carly beats Bo to death with a baseball bat. Upon seeing him dead, Vincent furiously chases Carly to the top floor where she tries to reason with him about his brother's treachery but, with Nick's help, is able to defeat him by stabbing him in the back. The deceased Vincent falls through the floor and lands on top of Bo's corpse, while Carly and Nick escape from the building as it melts to the ground.

The next morning, the police arrive and report that Ambrose had been abandoned for ten years since the sugar mill shut down. As Nick and Carly are taken to the hospital, it is soon discovered that the Sinclairs had a third son, revealed to be Lester. From inside the ambulance, Carly spots Lester with the Sinclairs' family dog, waving them goodbye as they are driven out of town.

Cast[]

• Elisha Cuthbert as Carly Jones
• Chad Michael Murray as Nick Jones
• Brian Van Holt as Bo and Vincent Sinclair
• Paris Hilton as Paige Edwards
• Jared Padalecki as Wade Felton
• Jon Abrahams as Dalton Chapman
• Robert Ri'chard as Blake Johnson
• Damon Herriman as Lester Sinclair
• Andy Anderson as Sheriff
• Dragicia Debert as Trudy Sinclair
• Murray Smith as Doctor Victor Sinclair
• Emma Lung as Jennifer (uncredited)

Filming[]

House of Wax was filmed at Warner Bros. Movie World, Australia. The Town set was constructed a few miles down the road, off Hollindale Road, in the Guanaba area.^[5]

Lawsuit[]

In January 2006, Village Roadshow Studios owners Village Theme Park Management and Warner Brothers Movie World Australia announced they were suing special effects expert David Fletcher and Wax Productions because of a fire on the set during production.

The $7 million lawsuit alleges that Mr. Fletcher and Wax Productions were grossly negligent over the fire, which destroyed part of the Gold Coast's Warner Bros. Movie World studios. The alleged grounds of negligence included not having firefighters on stand-by and using timber props near a naked flame. The set where the fire broke out has now been demolished and is a field kept for Movie World for future projects.^[6]

Release[]

Opening in 3,111 theaters, the film grossed $12 million in its opening weekend. House of Wax earned $70 million worldwide,^[3] $32 million of which came from North American receipts.^[2] House of Wax also earned $42 million in VHS/DVD rentals.^[7] On July 13, 2021 a collector's edition Blu-Ray of House of Wax was released by Scream Factory^[8] in the US & Canada.

Reception[]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 26% based on 157 reviews, and the average rating is 4.29/10. The site's consensus reads, "Bearing little resemblance to the 1953 original, House of Wax is a formulaic but better-than-average teen slasher flick."^[9] On Metacritic, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 41 out of 100 based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[10] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.^[11]

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "House of Wax is not a good movie, but it is an efficient one and will deliver most of what anyone attending House of Wax could reasonably expect...assuming it would be unreasonable to expect very much." He said of Hilton's performance that "she is no better or worse than the typical Dead Post-Teenager and does exactly what she is required to do in a movie like this, with all the skill—admittedly finite—that is required."^[12] Film critic Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post, gave the film four out of five stars, calling it a "guilty pleasure" and wrote that it gives horror fans exactly what they want.^[13] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle rated it 4/5 stars and wrote, "After a month, no one will talk about this movie again. Still, with a picture like this, there is really only one question: Is it fun? Yes. Lots. Definitely."^[14] Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle called it boring and poorly-acted, though he complimented Cuthbert and Murray.^[15] A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "The set design is fairly elaborate by the standards of the genre, and the victims don't die in precisely the order you might expect, but everything else goes pretty much according to formula".^[16]

Awards and nominations[]

Soundtrack[]

House of Wax: Music from the Motion Picture is the title of a publicly released soundtrack used for House of Wax, consisting of commercially recorded songs.^[23] A second album, simply titled House of Wax, was released containing the film score, composed by John Ottman.^[24]

There is a song appearing in the film which is not integrated in the soundtrack. It is "Roland" by Interpol, and appears in the scene when the group decides to camp over the night at the beginning of the film. The song that plays during the end credits is "Helena" by My Chemical Romance.

See also[]

• 2005 in film
• Mystery of the Wax Museum

References[]

External links[]

• Official website
• House of Wax at IMDb
• House of Wax at Box Office Mojo
• House of Wax at Rotten Tomatoes
• House of Wax at Metacritic