Warner Bros. Pictures

Its always a risky move remaking a classic horror, especially one starring the daddy of classic horror himself, the late Vincent Price. Maybe that’s why the 2005 version of House of Wax is stuck with a measly 26% on Rotten Tomatoes and a crappy 41/100 on Metacritic

Or, maybe that’s because some critics clearly can’t recognize a brilliant noughties teen slasher when they see one.

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Warner Bros. Pictures

Disclaimer: House of Wax (2005) has a special place in my heart. Upon the movie’s release in May 2005, I was a spunky 13-year-old emo kid (wannabe goth-punk), freshly let off the parental leash and exploring the world – i.e. our local town center – on a Saturday with all my friends. Because we weren’t exactly cool kids, to avoid the kind of abuse we’d gotten all week at school, we’d sometimes ditch the alt-teen hangout for the local cinema. House of Wax was the first real horror movie I saw in the cinema, managing to smudge on enough eyeliner and build up enough (probably too much) confidence to get into a movie I was two years too young to see! I also had ulterior motives for seeing this movie – read on for that big reveal (bonus points if you can already guess!).

It might not have Vincent Price, but it has Chad Michael Murray, which in 2005, really meant something. While he obviously doesn’t compare to the great Price, as well as being an early ’00s heartthrob, he plays the character of Nick, the loner bad boy brother to Elisha Cuthbert’s girl-next-door Carly, really well. 

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Chad Michael Murray as Nick Jones / Warner Bros. Pictures

Then we’ve got Carly’s boyfriend, Wade, the boy-next-door hiding coyly behind his bangs, played by Jared Padalecki – who would later that year go on to play Sam Winchester, half of the Supernatural brother-duo that would make him a household name and give him a career for the next 15+ years. 

Also in this mixed bag of friends that make our protagonists, we’ve got Dalton (played by Scary Movie’s Jon Abrahams), the weird, kinda pervy, video-camera obsessed dude who seems like he’d really get on with Final Destination 3’s Frankie Cheeks. Then there’s stereotypical jock Blake (Robert Ri’chard), and Paige, his plastic girlfriend (come on, Mean Girls came out the year before, if you don’t get that reference, you can’t sit with us) played by Paris Hilton for some reason. Early-mid 2000s was the hey-day of her popularity, and for those who despised her, it made for a perfect horror movie death.

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Paris Hilton as Paige Edwards / Warner Bros. Pictures

Speaking of deaths, why else would you be watching a horror movie than for gory, over the top deaths?! For the story? Shut up. House of Wax definitely delivers on the death count. Like Wade’s untimely death early on, re-writing the cliche list of who goes first (it should’ve been Blake or Paige, but they live on for quite a while). Caught snooping through the creepy homestead of antagonist Bo Sinclair (Brian Van Holt), he’s captured and encased in wax while still alive in just one of the movie’s skin-crawling, cringefest moments. Later on, he’s discovered by Dalton – still alive – who then tries to break off the wax he’s entombed in, but Wade’s skin peels away with the wax in a disgustingly intense scene that’s bound to have you groan out loud and/or be sick in your mouth. Dalton’s death is a little lackluster after this scene, a standard hedge-trimmer decapitation, as is Blake’s knife to the throat, but Paige’s head-impaling on the rusty pipe she tried to attack Vincent with, makes up for that in spades. Seeing Paris Hilton die on-screen was even used in the movie’s marketing, with “See Paris Die, May 6” t-shirts made to celebrate the momentous occasion. 

It’s not just the deaths that are gloriously violent though, there’s also plenty of beautifully sick injuries, like the Achilles tendon cut that leads to Wade’s capture (which has haunted me to this day), Carly losing a finger to a pair of wire cutters while trying to escape capture from Bo’s ex-conjoined twin, Vincent – also played by Brian Van Holt and a nice little homage to the original House of Wax star – and Carly again, as we see a close up of her ripping open her glued-together lips to escape the deformed murderer, Vincent. 

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Elisha Cuthbert as Carly Jones / Warner Bros. Pictures

I’d love to hear an argument against the movie’s epic conclusion, as we see the whole wax house burn to the ground. The special effects are insane, and the imagery of seeing all of the wax figures – who we know are actual, real people dipped in wax – melt is joyously grotesque. Carly and Nick’s fight against Vincent gives us a close look at the masked killer, as his wax mask melts, making him look even more creepy! Brilliant.

While 2005’s House of Wax might not be as well renowned as the original, it holds its own as a horror movie. It ticks many of the boxes of what you’d expect from a ’90s-’00s teen horror, including the nu-metal soundtrack and a rather odd collection of kids who just want to enjoy their road trip. Alas, it never happens and they all die violent deaths. 

It’s also got creepy rednecks, like so many classic slasher flicks. But in this case, the creepy redneck creates the ambiguous, cliff-hanger ending – another ’90s-’00s perfect teen horror trope, and perhaps a homage to the OG slasher, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

And so the credits roll, “Helena” by My Chemical Romance blasts through the cinema speakers, and there we have the real reason why my life depended on me getting in to see that movie. It was a bonus that it turned out to be a pretty good even if kinda basic, cliche and chock-full of tropes horror flick, that I still enjoy, and believe stood the test of time, to this day 15 years later.


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