House of Wax

Rating

Director

Jaume Collet-Serra

Screenplay

Chad Hayes, Carey W. Hayes

Length

1h 53m

Starring

Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri’chard, Dragitsa Debert

MPAA Rating

R

Review

One of the reasons the horror industry crashed and burned in the 2000s was its reliance on adaptations that barely held a candle to their predecessors. House of Wax, however, may have set the bar to its absolute lowest point.

Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray star as siblings who are joined by a group of friends on their way to a football game and choose to camp for the night near the almost-ghost town of Ambrose. There, the few inhabitants don’t care for strangers, especially those who damage their property. It’s a short ride from there to a slaughterfest as the various twenty-somethings are picked off one-by-one. The film’s premise surrounds a seemingly-abandoned wax museum that was a tourist trap for the town but whose caretakers want to preserve its legacy.

In the 1980s, horror rarely pulled in established young actors. Small segments of their casts typically went on to bigger and better things (think the likes of Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt). By 2005, familiar names from television took roles in big budget horror films hoping to star in the next Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or Final Destination. Perhaps that’s the reason these modestly successful TV personalities stopped in for a throwaway horror performance.

Cuthbert, a capable enough actor, came to fame as the daughter of the lead character on 24 before landing this film role, her 9th feature film and possibly her worst. Murray was riding high on his television success with One Tree Hill and a pair of successful feature performances in Freaky Friday and A Cinderella Story. This was a waste of his talents. Socialite Paris Hilton tagged into numerous projects on both television and film and never parlayed that success into big screen clout. This film might well be the reason why. Her performance is one of the worst in the genre, before or after. Finally, Jared Padalecki was just coming off the success of Gilmore Girls and was heading into the even more successful Supernatural, with this being his least successful big screen role.

None of these actors were firing on all cylinders, or even any of them, and it was partly the fault of the cringe-worthy screenplay written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes. Their limp treatment barely resembles the horror story by Charles S. Belden, the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, or the 1953 remake of that film, House of Wax, which was one of Vincent Price’s most iconic. Perhaps it’s best that neither of those prior productions can be seen in this meandering horror failure. There was nothing that director Jaume Collet-Serra could have done to rescue the picture and it remains the nadir of his filmography.

A more faithful remake of the Price film could have given audiences something fun and engaging to watch with lots of suspense and some genuine chills. Unfortunately, House of Wax is a meandering, cheap looking bore. Horror fans might catch it for the time capsule it presents as one of the biggest flops of 2000s horror. That said, there are significantly more interesting efforts in the film’s release vicinity and even in the tawdry, corny 1980s train wrecks that would be more fascinating and entertaining than this one.

Review Written

October 1, 2026