Now for the remake of the 50’s classic we get a movie that couldn’t be any more early 2000’s if it tried. This one has been on my list of trash horror to watch for years and I never got around to seeing it but finally I can scratch this one off. It’s funny how outside of the general premise, the only thing that I could really tell you about the movie without looking anything up was that it had Paris Hilton in it and that is very sad. I mean, come on! It’s also got Supernatural‘s own Jared Padalecki plus Chad Michael Murray and Elisha Cuthbert. What a star studded cast!

A group of 20-somethings are on a road trip to go see the biggest college football game of the year. Most of them have recently graduated except for Nick, twin brother of Carly, who recently got out on parole. Carly has an internship at InStyle magazine in New York and so we have a good twin/bad twin dynamic. When they camp in a random spot in the woods on the way, they wake up to find Wade, Carly’s boyfriend, can’t start his car because his fan belt is busted. Carly and Wade hitch a ride to a nearby town while everyone else tries to go on to the game. Turns out the town has a House of Wax, quite literally made of wax as well, but appears to be mostly empty. Unfortunately for them, it isn’t empty because it still has a couple residents that are looking to add a few more figures to the wax collection.

First of all, holy shit the soundtrack to this is amazing if you are specifically me and/or have the worst taste in music. Nothing gets me pumped for a tense chase scene in a horror movie quite like a Marilyn Manson B-side. Note that this is not sarcasm. I fuckin love shitty early 2000’s rock. Gimme some Disturbed and Deftones, baby. Anyway, music aside, this is not nearly as bad as I had thought it would be but still a far sight from good. The movie sets up so much that it just doesn’t bother doing anything with. The killers are twins and so are the main characters. Does this matter? No it does not. The killer twins had one disfigured one and one abused one. Will our heroes discovering this do anything? That would be silly, no. Also, for a movie that so prominently seemed to feature Paris Hilton, she SPOILER ALERT never even goes to the House of Wax town. Like she just gets killed somewhere else and never has anything to do with the wax stuff. Wild choices.

There are very few nods to the original that creep into this. One of the killers is named Vincent, obviously referencing Vincent Price, and he wears a wax mask to hide his disfigurement much like Price did in the original. That’s…well, that’s pretty much it. Instead of having a tormented artist that is driven mad by his love of creating art being taken from him, this movie is another entry in a long line of Redneck Horror. By which I mean it is a movie that explicitly states that you should never trust anyone that is in a poor and rural area because they are dangerous. Hell, we even get one character that is supposed to be the fake out redneck you get in these types of movies that seems scary but is actually helpful but then the movie straight up ends on “No that guy was actually also in on it and evil as well.” While the acting and pacing leave a lot to be desired, I will say the set piece for the final showdown was genuinely cool.

I think a lot of the hate for this probably came from Paris Hilton backlash as this was entirely too mediocre to garner that level of disdain.

Score: 3 out of 5