It’s a truly harrowing viewing experience in which his physical and mental pain is inescapable, and the thought of being in that situation is absolutely horrifying.
Then comes the money shot, in which Wade is strapped to a strange chair-like device surrounded by hoses and taps, and steaming hot wax showers down on him as his muffled screams ring out. So showing Wade in such a vulnerable state, in which all pretense of machismo is lost, is very impactful and suggests just how desperately overpowered he is by Vincent. It is not often that teen horror allows real vulnerability in its characters - especially the men, who usually try to wrestle with the villain and call him a “sick fuck” before dropping dead in a quick and neat fashion. He wakes up drugged on a table, aware of everything going on but unable to move, and the sight of tears running down his face is a surprisingly effective one. As the first to fall prey to Vincent, and with the audience not yet knowing what the brothers are really up to, Wade’s ordeal makes for a grizzly watch. So while much of the slashing is fairly typical of the era and not likely to invoke fear in older or more experienced horror watchers, it is the instances of body horror that secure the movie its most effective scares. Landing squarely in the 2000s brand of horror, House of Wax is really able this time around to explore the realm of body horror that the earlier tellings of the story were not. Turns out, Bo isn’t just an abrasive gas station proprietor, but he and his disfigured twin brother, Vincent, are knee-deep in an elaborate scheme to preserve the town, and more importantly, their mother’s work, by capturing people and turning them into wax sculptures. However, when the couple accompanies Bo back to his house, Wade is chased by an unseen menace, and Carly runs for her life. But the town itself is sweet and old-fashioned, and at first, nothing seems amiss. A number of the works are signed "Vincent" - an obvious but not unwelcome nod to Price’s involvement in the 1953 movie - and there is an eeriness to the place that makes Carly uncomfortable. Even more unusual is the structure of the building, which is made entirely of wax. The couple explores the town while they wait and happen upon Trudy’s House of Wax, a dingy old waxwork museum that oddly features no celebrity lookalikes or famous figures. They wander into the local church and are embarrassed to walk in on a funeral, where they meet garage owner Bo ( Brian Van Holt), who promises to help them once the body is in the ground. This is how they stumble upon the strange town of Ambrose, a little postcard of a place that seems slightly too peaceful. When they wake up, one of their cars has been vandalized, so Carly and Wade venture into a nearby town to fix it while their friends go on to the football game. Jaume Collet-Serra takes a distinctly more modern approach to the source material in his 2005 directorial debut, while still managing to pay homage to the original movies and a bygone era of cinema.Ĭarly ( Elisha Cuthbert) camps out on her way to a football game with her boyfriend Wade ( Jared Padalecki), obnoxious twin brother Nick ( Chad Michael Murray), and their friends Dalton ( Jon Abrahams), Blake ( Robert Ri’chard) and Paige ( Paris Hilton). The original movie and the Vincent Price remake centered on a tortured artist, whose waxwork sculpting suffers when he is maimed in a fire and loses the use of his hands, prompting him to seek easier ways of creating the same effect. The uncanny valley way that waxworks unsettle the human mind is a brilliant starting point for horror and has been taken in a number of directions over the years, such as the Waxwork films. It’s a darkly amusing concept that filmmakers have had a lot of fun with. The three movies only have a basic thread of commonality, in which a waxwork museum’s exhibits are made up of human bodies. It is best remembered, if at all, for its 1953 remake House of Wax starring horror legend Vincent Price. Belden’s unpublished short story The Wax Works, it was first made into a movie in 1933 titled The Mystery of the Wax Museum. By the time House of Wax went into production in the mid-2000s, it was already an old story that had been told on screen twice.
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