House of Wax

The 1953 House of Wax was in 3-D, but Jaume Collet-Serra's purported remake is strictly one-dimensional. I say "purported" because this is less a refashioning of the original than yet another successor to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre--i.e., a by-the-numbers gore-fest about a bunch of generic teens who stumble into a chamber of horrors, only to be picked off one by one. In this case, the locale is a shuttered wax museum in an isolated backwoods town, where a half-dozen kids on their way to a basketball game are stranded and targeted by two crazy brothers. A couple survive of course, but most bite the dust--or the melted wax, as it were. On the plus side, the production design of the museum is quite elaborate, and the sight of the place turning to goop as it goes up in flames has a certain degree of panache. In addition, potential victims Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, and Jared Padalecki cut better figures than is often the case in these slice-and-dice flicks. On the minus side, one of the teens is played by Paris Hilton, and she's every bit as awful as you'd expect--though there's some compensation for her flat, bored line readings in her character's grisly end. But it's not enough to recommend this gruesome splatter movie. [Note: Available in either widescreen or full screen versions, DVD extras include a “B-Roll and Bloopers Video Cast Commentary” (27 min.), a “House Built on Wax” visual effects featurette (10 min.), “Wax On” on the design of House of Wax (8 min.), a four-minute gag reel, “From Location: Joel Silver Reveals House of Wax” (2 min.), an alternate opening (2 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a so-so grab bag of extras for a lame and very loose remake.] (F. Swietek)