House of Wax -- 2005 -- R

Theoretically, this is a remake of he 1953 film with Vincent Price, but the only similarity between this one and that one is the wax covered corpses, and the deformed man with the wax face. Beyond that, this is an original take on the old idea.

The idea behind this film isn't bad. You have an isolated town with a wax museum made entirely of wax. Some argue that the wax building would melt in the sun, but wax takes some extreme temperatures to melt, and I don't see it as a large error. Anyway, the entire town is essentially dead, so these brothers take it over, filling the shops and building with wax dummies to give the entire town the appearance of being a wax museum. Come to find out that these brothers are killing passers-by and covering their bodies with wax. The deaths are okay, the chases are pretty good, and the ending is kind of neat as well.

Characters are about normal for a horror movie in that you get just enough to know who they are, but not develop them to the point that you care. They also do their typical range of idiotic things such as exploring other people's houses and going places that the script tells them to. I rolled my eyes a lot during this film.

When would I have left if I were them? When I'd made camp and a truck drives up and sits there with its lights shining on the campsite. Knowing there was someone in the area who would do this, I would never go to sleep. We'd be out of there. What do they do? Go to sleep only to have a camera stolen and a car sabotaged. Can't say that I'm that surprised.

In the end, for a horror flick, it was okay, but certainly not the best, or even decent, film to come out last year. If they'd spent some time developing the characters and having them make intelligent decisions, that would have improved this film a lot.