House of Wax (2005 film)

House of Wax
Directed by	Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by	Charles Belden Chad Hayes Carey Hayes
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 Windon
Edited by	Joel Negron
Music by	John Ottman
Production companies	Village Roadshow Pictures Dark Castle Entertainment
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates	April 30, 2005 (2005-04-30) (Tribeca) May 6, 2005 (2005-05-06) (United States) July 14, 2005 (2005-07-14) (Australia)
Running time	105 minutes
Countries	Template:Film US Australia
Language	English
Budget	$40 million
Box office	$70,064,800

House of Wax (also titled Wax House, Baby) is a 2005 American horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. It is a very loose remake of the 1953 horror film of the same name, which is in turn a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum. It was released in theaters on May 6, 2005. On October 25, 2005, the film came out on DVD and on Blu-ray on September 26, 2006. Despite movie reviewers giving the film a negative critical reception, it was a financial success.

Plot

In 1974, a woman is making a wax head in the kitchen while her son eats cereal in his highchair. Her husband enters carrying a young boy who is shouting and kicking. The boy is forced into a highchair and strapped in place by his father. After being strapped and taped to his chair by his mother, he scratches her hand. She then slaps her child across the face.

In 2005, Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) with her friend Paige (Paris Hilton) and Paige's boyfriend Blake (Robert Ri'chard) are on their way to a highly anticipated football game in Louisiana. Eventually, Carly's delinquent twin brother, Nick (Chad Michael Murray) and his friend Dalton (Jon Abrahams) also join them. Night falls and the group decides to set up camp for the night. The campsite is later visited by a stranger in a pickup truck who shines his lights at the campsite, but refuses to leave or address them until Nick smashes a headlight with a bottle. The next morning, Carly and Paige go exploring, Carly falls down a cliff and lands in deer remains and sees a fake hand. Wade's car's fan belt is found to be damaged. The group meets a disheveled, rural man named Lester (Damon Herriman), who offers to drive Carly and Wade to the nearby town of Ambrose to get a new fan belt, while the rest of them go to the football game.

The two arrive at Ambrose, which is virtually a ghost town. Unable to find an attendant at the auto mechanics shop, they wander into the church, disrupting a funeral. There, they meet a mechanic named Bo (Brian Van Holt ), who offers to sell them a fan belt after the funeral. While waiting for the services to end, Carly and Wade visit the wax museum, which itself is made of wax and is the central feature of the town. Afterward, they follow Bo to his house to find a proper fan belt. While there, Wade is crippled and stabbed by a long-haired man with a wax facemask named Vincent. Bo grabs Carly, super glues her lips shut and locks her in a cellar. Dalton and Nick arrive in Ambrose to look for Carly and Wade. Vincent meanwhile strips and shaves Wade, then puts him in a chair with a metal contraption on his head which pins his eyes open. Vincent pulls a couple of levers which showers the immobile Wade with hot wax.

While Nick questions Bo if he has seen his sister, Carly tries signaling for help by sticking her finger out of a vent, trying to get her brother's attention. Bo notices her finger sticking out, and snips the tip off with a pair of dikes. Carly falls screaming in pain and later pries her lips open in order to scream for help. Nick, hearing her screams, knocks Bo out after he attacks him. Nick locks Bo out of the station and finds his sister, and the two escape. Dalton finds Wade who is alive but he is unable to move or talk because he is immobilized by the layer of wax covering his body. Dalton peels off the wax but realizes he is peeling Wade's skin off. Vincent finds Dalton and accidentally slashes Wade's face with a knife; Wade immediately dies from shock. Vincent later chases and decapitates Dalton, killing him too. Meanwhile, Nick and Carly realize that the wax figures are actually real people – Bo and Vincent have been trapping people in wax in order for the figures to look more realistic. Bo finds Carly and Nick at the theatre, but they escape after Nick shoots Bo with a crossbow.

Vincent goes to their camp site, kills Blake, and chases Paige to an abandoned sugar mill. After being stabbed in the foot, Paige hides in a car but Vincent finds her, and impales her in the head with a spear. As Vincent brings Blake and Paige's bodies Carly and Nick overhear Bo and Vincent talking and discovers that they were conjoined twins. Their father, a doctor, performed a controversial procedure to separate the brothers. The surgery left half of Vincent's face badly deformed, forcing him to wear a wax mask for the rest of his life.

Nick and Carly find the basement where they find Dalton's body covered in wax. Nick tries to remove the contraption but ends up twisting his head. Bo and Vincent find and chase Carly and Nick to the House of Wax. Nick and Carly unintentionally set the House of Wax on fire, causing the entire structure to melt. Nick and Carly encounter Bo and Nick starts fighting with him. Just as Bo is about to finish Nick off, Carly beats Bo to death with a baseball bat, which Vincent sees and becomes sad and furious. Vincent chases Carly into an upstairs bedroom; Nick follows after them, but gets stuck in the melting stairs. Inside the bedroom, Carly tries to block the wax door with a baby crib, but Vincent slashes through. Carly tries to tell Vincent that Bo lied to him about how his (Vincent's) work on the wax figures would've made their mother proud, but Vincent ignores and tries to kill her. Nick, after getting unstuck, finally reaches the bedroom and attacks Vincent, which results with Nick tearing off Vincent's mask, revealing his deformed face. Carly then stabs Vincent in the abdomen, killing him. As the House of Wax continues to melt from the fire, the room in which all three are in collapses, causing Vincent to land on Bo's corpse (striking a similarity when they were conjoined as infants) and both get submerged in the melted wax. Nick and Carly escape the fiery House of Wax and breathlessly watch as it melts to the ground.

The ambulance and police arrive at daybreak, reporting that Ambrose has been abandoned for ten years when the local sugar mill failed. The policeman (Andy Anderson) reveals that there was a third son of Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair who happens to be Lester. Nick and Carly are then taken to hospital. As the ambulance leaves, Carly sees Lester looking and smiling at her while sitting on his truck with Vincent's dog, Sandwich. Carly remembers Lester telling her and her friends to go the Ambrose in the first place. Carly may or may not realize that Lester is one of the killers.

Production

Principal photography of House of Wax took place in Queensland, Australia in 2004.

Cast

• Elisha Cuthbert as Carly Jones
• Chad Michael Murray as Nick Jones
• Brian Van Holt as Bo Sinclair / Vincent Sinclair
• Paris Hilton as Paige Edwards
• Jared Padalecki as Wade Felton
• Jon Abrahams as Dalton Chapman
• Robert Ri'chard as Blake
• Andy Anderson as Sheriff
• Damon Herriman as Lester
• Dragitsa Debert as Trudy Sinclair
• Murray Smith as Dr. Victor Sinclair
• Thomas Adamson as Young Bo
• Sam Harkess as Young Vincent
• Emma Lung as Jennifer

Lawsuit

In January 2006, it was announced by Warner Roadshow studio owners Village Theme Park Management and Warner Brothers Movie World Australia that 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 the 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 a field kept for Movie World for future projects.

Release

Box office

Opening in 3,111 theaters, the film grossed $12 million in its first three days. Though most critics did not recommend the film, many of them acknowledged that it was well made and/or better than other recent similar films. House of Wax earned $70,064,800 worldwide. 46.6% of that total came from domestic receipts. House of Wax also earned $42,000,000 in VHS/DVD rentals.

Reception

The film received negative reviews from critics, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 25% "rotten" rating. It was also nominated for three Razzie Awards including Worst Picture and Worst Remake or Sequel, with Paris Hilton winning Worst Supporting Actress. Critics and audiences had agreed that Hilton's character's death was the best part of the film; a limited-run promotional t-shirt advertising the movie on the front and "SEE PARIS DIE" was apparently in very high demand.

Soundtrack

Untitled

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. A second album, titled House of Wax was released contained the film score, composed by John Ottman.

Track listing

House of Wax: Music from the Motion Picture

No.	Title	Performer	Length
1.	"Spitfire"	The Prodigy featuring Juliette Lewis	5:08
2.	"Helena"	My Chemical Romance	3:52
3.	"Minerva"	Deftones	4:17
4.	"Gun in Hand"	Stutterfly	3:29
5.	"Prayer"	Disturbed	3:38
6.	"Path to Prevail"	Bloodsimple	3:17
7.	"Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World"	Marilyn Manson	4:15
8.	"Dirt"	The Stooges	7:00
9.	"Not That Social"	The Von Bondies	3:00
10.	"Cut Me Up"	Har Mar Superstar	3:10
11.	"New Dawn Fades"	Joy Division	4:46
12.	"Taking Me Alive"	Dark New Day	4:43
Total length:			50:41

Original Motion Picture Score

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Opening/Tantrum"	3:28
2.	"Ritual/Escape the Church"	4:15
3.	"Story of the Town"	1:39
4.	"Up in Flames"	3:42
5.	"They Look So Real"	2:16
6.	"Sealed Lips"	3:56
7.	"Brotherly Love"	2:28
8.	"Hanging with Baby Jane"	3:36
9.	"Paris Gets It"	3:07
10.	"Curiosity Kills"	2:33
11.	"Bringing Down the House"	5:08
12.	"Three Sons"	2:28
13.	"Endless Service"	2:45
Total length:		41:21

There is a song appearing in the movie 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 very beginning of the movie.

External links

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