Hallowatch 2026 No. 21: House of Wax (2005)
Wikipedia • Can there even be spoilers on a movie like this? Surely you don't go in expecting no-one will die, right? OCT21
I remember when this came out; my friends who were far more into Horror than I was were talking a lot of trash about it due to it having Paris Hilton as the fourth lead. I never saw it until this viewing.
I've run into a couple other "Dark Castle" productions — this was Joel Silver & Robert Zemeckis's attempt to do the Blumhouse thing roughly a decade before Blumhouse became a thing, spend less than $10 million and hope for a hit — but for some reason they tied it to this idea of reviving or remaking William Castle productions; that was dropped eventually. This is a loose remake of the 1953 Vincent Price picture of the same name.
More interesting than its stuntcasting of Paris Hilton is its past-and-future-CW Teen Hearthrobs, Jared Supernatural and Chad Michael Murray. Padalecki did great, had an opportunity to show his range, was a marked improvement over his role as Dean in Gilmore Girls. Chad Michael Murray, idk man. I feel like he's got one mode and it was this weird pouty thing that did not work here.
Plotwise, It's a pretty bog-standard set up — teens stranded in the middle of nowhere, they stumble upon some weird shut-ins, in the manner of your scoobies-doo and what have you. There was a brief moment of escalation that had me sit up, when Bo cuts off Carly's index finger with a cutting pliers, like maybe this isn't going to just spin wheels for an hour slowly killing everyone before the finale set piece, but that is indeed what it did.
Ultimately, I had a good time with this; muscle through the first half to when it actually gets good.
Also: I've been sick as a dog lately so I haven't had the chance to do art; consequently tbd on the remainder of the blog series, whether it will have hand-done art. ■
