House of Wax (Film Review)

2005 Warner Bros. Pictures
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra; Written by: Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri'chard
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 113 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 4/10

A group of dumb and horny teenagers are on a road trip to attend a college football game about which only one of them seems to care. Nothing seems to be working out, though Some creep drives his truck up on their overnight countryside camp site; the belt on one of their cars breaks; now they've got to split up. A few try to go to the game. A few try to get a new belt in the nearby weirdo remote town...which is apparently famous for its wax museum. Meanwhile, the other teenagers get stuck in traffic, and decide to head back to the remote town to help their friends. They'll brutally die all the same.
2005's House of Wax is, to use a phrase my dad used to say all the time that I now realize I don't understand, "dumb as a doornail." I'm not even sure what a doornail is, other than that it is something that the characters in House of Wax would likely find shoved under their fingernail. For some reason, though, the film believes that those aggressively unintelligent characters are interesting enough that the 113 minute film doesn't need to visit the titular House of Wax until nearly an hour in. When the movie finally gets there, it doesn't stop being stupid, but it does become surprisingly extreme, with appendages and tendons and skin snipped off, and many of the characters left to die mute and in incredible pain under a lifelike veneer of wax.
House of Wax just takes too long to get going, grinding gears monotonously with silly camping scenes that do nothing to entertain or heighten the suspense. The actual idea of the town, once revealed, also makes no logical sense. The plot is so stupid. Still, the movie looks great, all of the wax stuff and gore effects are crafted with top notch ability, and the masked villain is memorable. Chad Michael Murray, who I want to make fun of for starring in the CW's One Tree Hill, is actually a decent heroic male lead here, and the rare good brother character, though he gets handicapped at times by the dumb script. I just really wish House of Wax didn't spin its wheels for so long, and that it could be a little smarter. From the visuals, tone, moment in time, and (awesome, but out of place) soundtrack, it almost feels like Maxim magazine made a movie.
Speaking of that old lad mag, Elisha Cuthbert, firmly in her Maxim era, was and is not a bad actress, but through she looks like an impossibly beautiful porcelain doll throughout House of Wax, she gives one of her worst performances. However, that performance dwarfs that of her costar, Paris Hilton. I usually hate award shows, even the Golden Raspberry show that makes fun of them, but Hilton's award for worst actress that year is firmly deserved. Yet... I think she firmly understood her assignment here and is used well. Hilton was one of the most controversial celebrities of the 00s, apparently famous for being famous. I don't watch reality TV, though from the few clips I've seen of her on those, her ditzy blonde persona feels like an act she was having fun with. Whatever the case, I'll be blunt and say, if in 2005, Paris Hilton walked up to me on the street and said, "Hey, The Nicsperiment, do you want to have a lifetime of sex with me, while also co-inheriting the Hilton Hotel fortune?" I would have said "Find a minister and monogram my Hilton towel, in that exact order." She looks gorgeous in this film and plays up the dumb ditz persona to the hilt because House of Wax knows that the viewer wants to see her insipid, useless, and badly acted character die as violent and humiliating a death as possible, and boy does she. Hilton does nothing to sink this film. House of Wax is stupid all on its own.