MOVIE REVIEW - House of Wax (2005)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki

Six friends on their way to see a college football match get stranded near an abandoned town. Now they must get out of town before they become permanent exibits at the town's House of Wax run by psychotic twins.

This is a quite bearable, if a little overlong horror movie. It contains enough freak-out gore and creepy moments to keep quite good in the genre. It helps that the cast is basically, with the exception of Paris Hilton, pretty good and for the most part believable. The stand out performances come in the lead roles of brother and sister, Murray and Cuthbert repsectively. Murray is strong as the rebel turned hero and Cuthbert is great in her scream queen debut. Also Brian Van Holt is suitably scary as the bad guy, comes across part Johnny Cash and part Deliverance backwaters rapist.

It is definatly passable as a horror movie, better than most expectations would allow.

The Good: Scary enough. Good performances.
The Bad: Paris Hilton. Jared Padalecki's character is annoyingly dumb. Long run time.
The Ugly: Just usual horror movie morons who don't run at the first sign of trouble.

Overall: Another okay horror movie. 5/10.