Confused Candlemakers - 'House Of Wax', Flick Through Review

It's been a hot second, partly because I have been wanting to reformat and refresh the whole Chogg.Blog, but also partly because I needed a break and a little bit because I started a new job alongside my writing. So, to tackle a trashy B-movie that has been recommended to me a few times and also ties in with my new profession at a candle factory I think we should talk about House Of Wax (2005).

I like a good rubbish film. So when I see one with actual names in it that looks well produced I start to get curious about what went wrong to land it in front of me. Specifically, a friend told me : "You'll like it, it's fun trash". But what actually happened in House Of Wax? Is it really that bad?

Well, yes. Yes it is.

(Left To Right) Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Scooby

Released to a lot of unimpressed critics and confused general audiences, House Of Wax still made money despite its star-studded cast with Paris Hilton and Chad Michael Murray delivering some of the ... performances ever. They really do act on the screen. But, although the movie is tonally all over the place, the writing has real potential and there are a few ideas here that we can pull out of this sludge to get a better look at.

Let me walk you through director Jaume Collet-Serra's vision. We open on close ups of a woman crafting a mask out of wax that she heats on a stove. The wax looks beautifully unrealistic, which is pretty bad right out of the gate. Then her kids come in, one of them agitated and angry and as she beats the 'naughty' child we cut away and get a big title telling us it's present day.

The most disgusting close up I have ever seen follows; we see something greasy slip through viscous red liquid and by the time I stopped myself from gagging it is revealed to be Paris Hilton dipping a chip in some ketchup. Food has never been so unappealing.

But now we are in the real story, so lets blast through:

We've got a little band of blobs who are introduced in the most in your face way possible. Paris Hilton is 'Paige', her best friend is Carly who is moving to New York. Carly's twin is very upset about this, his name is Nick and he is introduced punching food out of a homeless man's hand. We don't like Nick. Nick is Chad Michael Murray by the way.

Other characters that get thrown in front of us are Blake, a sex crazy guy who is with Paige, and Dalton who is either high or his friends make fun of his learning difficulties. It is unclear. Wade is Carly's boyfriend, and he doesn't like Nick but never stops speaking in a hoarse whisper that makes my throat hurt just hearing it.

So Dalton films his friends having sex and snogging and his friends brush this off like its 'just a Dalton thing'. Off to a troubling start. The gang are all driving to a sports game that Blake is all excited for, but the road ahead is closed! They drive next to each other on a narrow road at full speed while talking on the phone for a bit, which is insane and then they pull over and set up camp. Nick likes to sit alone, it's really early 2000s and the music that plays through the whole of these early scenes is a collection of The Prodigy, MCR, Marilyn Manson and Evanescence. Way too campy and thinks it is way too edgy. I'm loving this film so far.

So after a wild night where they break the headlight of some strangers car and then their own car is busted, Carly wanders off and falls in a pit of dead roadkill. A roadkill collector (is this a thing in America? I was genuinely caught off guard by the idea of someone who lives by the road, collects roadkill and cooks it and just lives a fulfilling life like that) helps her out and is willing to fix the gangs car. When they smell the body pit Nick shouts, "Dalton, did you crap your pants again?" and without a hint of humour Dalton shouts back, "I don't know... Maybe? These are my work clothes."

The gang get a little spooked by what looks like a human hand sticking out of the pile of roadkill, but the professional RoadKill Man (the RKM if you will) unscrews the hand, showing it is fake. But what did he unscrew it from? An arm? It wasn't a mannequin, and I have so many more questions now. But the gang all seem at ease after this display of insanity. The movie seems to have a barely dormant hatred for every one of its core cast.

The Redneck Roadkill Master Staring At A Woman As She Changes, Unashamed

Nobody is safe here. Dalton makes fun of couples while they tongue. Carly is ogled by roadkill man when she changes out of her bloody clothes. Nick is called a piece of shit moments before he makes fun of Dalton. Paige might be pregnant, but Blake doesn't care. Wade is obsessed with how evil Nick is, calling him the 'Evil Twin'.

We've got our victims.

House Of Wax has taken its time to set up each of these characters, so it is genuinely disappointing and just strange when none of them make the slightest bit of difference to the plot. Carly and her mopey man Wade head into a tiny town that the roadkill man drives them into - after both Wade and Carly don't trust him because he smells and has a big knife on his belt. The guy might be a pervy redneck, but the dream team of three different writers definitely want you to feel like the teens were cruel for assuming he was a freak.

The town is empty. The rest of the gang have went on ahead to the football game and now the couple stand at a garage and argue about what they should do. It seems the only place anyone could be is in the church, so Wade and Carly go in and find that they are interrupting an actual funeral. Yikes. I hate these kids. There are plenty in the congregation, but one man at the front walks over to them and is rightfully upset with the pair but when he sees that Carly is a pretty young gal he changes his mind. Carly trusts him, too; he has a kind of southern charm like a snake oil salesman. He introduces himself as Bo.

Bo trying to smoulder as he flirts with Carly

While they wait for Bo to finish up at the funeral, the couple wander around the literal house of wax that the film is named after. Inside, everything is wax. Walls, paintings, furniture, sculptures and a whole host of people. The collection of figures is strange, seemingly from different times and places and scattered weirdly around the building. There's a few really rubbish cheap scares here - I love horror, but throwing moments of silence followed by loud noises when there is nothing actually scary going on is just pants.

For some reason, Wade keeps holding a lighter up to all of the wax things while he talks about how beautiful and impressive they are. He seems like the kind of man who would only kill something he loved. He also says that Carly should enter the town beauty contest because she would obviously win: "Miss Ambrose? I wonder how many teeth you have to have to win that one?" He looks down on all of the country folk the second he meets them. So Wade is not our favourite. But then, who do we even have left to be a fan of? Bo grabs the couple and tells them to come back to his place for him to give them the missing part and when he gets them Wade asks if he can go inside to use the bathroom. This is purely an attempt to look around, because Wade is unhinged. As he wanders around in the shack sploshing around an embryo in a jar and messing with random tools a masked thing stabs at Wade's ankle with some scissors and the emo fart vanishes. Carly drives off in the car, trying to make an escape as soon as Wade has taken a little longer to poop than she expected but she gets got, tied up and moved into a torture room under the garage in the centre of the town.

So despite the journey to this football game being the entire driving force for the start of the story, the rest of the gang realise they aren't going to make it, so they head back to their campsite. Dalton and Carly's twin, Nick, head into the town to try and catch up with their friends, while Paige and Blake are going to fool around in a tent while their friends are missing.

It should be obvious already that one of the biggest issues with House Of Wax is the characters. Carly seems interesting at first, but is a blank slate for most of the film. Meanwhile every single other character is scummy, sleazy or downright nasty and it makes rooting for any of them really difficult. I'm unsure if that was the intent of director Jaum Collet-Sera, but it means that I'm watching this whole thing with a kind of morbid curiosity rather than any kind of emotional investment.

Somewhere in the dark underbelly, Wade is put in a metal frame, his moustache and eyebrows are shaved off and then he is sprayed down with scalding hot wax! Ouch!

Dalton and Nick get to the town and Nick has the start of an arc; Dalton says they should look for them together, while Nick shakes his head and scowls and says that they should wander around a tiny town in the dark alone.

Carly can see them from a grate over her head, but her lips have been superglued shut. Eventually she reaches a finger through the grate, only for Bo to snip it off with some wire trimmers. The camera cleverly stays on her face, where she can't scream because of her stuck lips and so just has to cry. This is creeepy stuff!! The film is finally finding some footing. Nick asks if he can look around the garage, things are tense above between Bo and Nick. Carly's lips burst open and she screams. This doesn't work for me... why do her lips pop open now? Why does that seem painless? But before we have time to adjust, Nick and Bo are tussling and Nick knocks Bo to the side before diving in to the garage to save his twin.

So what is everyone's favourite pervert, Dalton, up to? He went into the house of wax (TM) and found a new statue. It looks just like Wade, and after Dalton messes with it for a moment he realises that Wade is alive inside the wax. Every single statue is a delicately preserved corpse. Dalton wants to help, but peeling at the wax also tears off Wade's skin. It is gruesome and chilling … Or it would be if it was happening to anyone other than Wade.

But what's this?! Dalton is attacked by the mask wearing attacker who did this to Wade! This chase, which could've been a tense hide and seek through masses of posed waxy bodies, is over before it has even began. Dalton is beheaded and he is dragged down some stairs into a doorway that is wreathed in screaming faces in the walls, and flaring torches on either side. So there might be a gateway to hell under the house. That would be something, at least?

Where do we go from here? Back to the exciting bit?

No, we go to a very excessive strip tease scene with Paris Hilton stripping for 'Blake' to Automatic byBrothers Conti. This goes on uncomfortably long, and not in an intelligent way. This film is making no kind of commentary, like the exceptional The Substance that released a few weeks ago. This is just sex appeal for sex's sake, and it is a little hard to watch. The music stops, which kills the mood for Blake (?!) so he gets up to fix the music and Paige decides this is the perfect time to tell him that she is pregnant. BAM! Blake gets stabbed by the waxman. Then Paris Hilton runs around in her undies with a tactical hoodie over the top so that the Director of Photography can ensure that there are boobs on screen for as long as humanly possible. Hilton even manages to get a good stab at the masked waxman, and we see that his mask is … wait for it... made of wax!

The waxman retaliates by throwing a pole through Paige//Hilton's head and then the man uses Dalton's camera to film as he pushes her head further down the pole. Grosssss...

Now for the absolute best sequence in the film.

Every single person in the town is made of wax. The funeral was all a show, and Carly and Nick flee into the cinema building where they both hide on seats among the intricately posed cadavers of other victims. This is very effective! I love this moment, genuinely. This is proper, bone-chilling horror. Having to blend in with the cold flesh of the dead. *shivers*

Then Bo sees them, shoots a shotgun at them missing massively and blowing a hole in the head of one of the sculptures which sends flakes of wax, dried skin and viscera exploding into the air. Nick shoots Bo back, hitting him in the chest.

Nick tries to sacrifice himself for Carly, proving a little bit of growth. Maybe he isn't the evil twin that he said he was! Carly doesn't let him, of course. They both head into the shack that Bo lives in to find a phone, but they find out that Bo and the masked-wax-weirdo are twins! Just like them - WOW. Bo and his brother, Vincent, were conjoined twins, though, and the one who wears a mask lost an eye when the pair were detached.

Bo returns home, scaring the siblings who go for cover. How Bo is still alive, is a mystery. Spoilers - he has no supernatural capabilities. He has taken a few shots to the chest with a crossbow and is still fine. Well, he walks in, vomits in the sink and then uses the wire trimmers to clip the ends of the bolts off. Waxman comes home too, lugging Paige and Blake on the back of a truck to use them in the wax town. Their mother started the venture, and they want to finish the beautiful project.

Our heroes escape from the house through a trapdoor, and find poor Dalton being waxed in a strange contraption. All of this body horror wax stuff is pretty good because the film doesn't lose focus but by now the movie is spiralling to a clumsy ending.

Being chased, the siblings arrive at the house of wax after spilling burning wax in the tunnels. The whole house is starting to catch on fire. They all have a big fight, and Nick gets stabbed before Carly beats the hell out of Bo with a baseball bat. Nick gets stuck in hot wax, and Carly hides away in a room with wax doors. The whole plot is now as loose as the walls of the building, liquifying at speed. But it feels like it should be thematic when Vincent cuts through the door, the hot wax, and slices a carving of himself and Bo in two to get to Carly. This feels like a huge symbolic moment. But, like most of the nonsense in this film, it is just Nothing.

There is a conclusion to Nick's arc though; he realises that he cannot be alone when Vincent is pinning him down. Carly has to save him, and the evil twin learns that relying on someone is not a weakness, but working as a team is a strength. Maybe they learned that from the Super Wax Brothers? Who knows.

The film cannot wait to end now. The house falls into sludge, the pair jump to safety and then we smash cut to the police arriving. Carly and Nick are safe. They talk with the police who are sympathetic. Then they drive them off but leave just enough time for an ending sting! There was a third brother: RoadKill Man!

Cue credits, with My Chemical Romance's Helena slamming over the top.

Wow. So I hope it is abundantly clear that the main issue here is tone. When your characters are so deeply unlikeable but they are trying to be funny, or when you interrupt actual horror with sudden out of nowhere unnecessary steamy scenes what is the actual point that they are trying to make? House Of Wax is a remake, and maybe one day I will watch the original. But for now this campy, poorly acted and worse-written film will by my only interaction with the candle world in film ... And I love it!

I'm back and Chogg.Blogging - keep an eye out for any new posts by following me over @conhogg on Instagram or @pastadeficit on the racist hellhole previously known as Twitter. Big stuff on the way! Let me know what you think about this post, especially how LONG it is...

Thanks for reading :) <3