Horror in the Aughts, Issue 6: Mid Aughts Remakes Continue to Rule the Landscape
[Editor’s Note: Our very own Eric Mayo came to me in December with an idea for a new series. While he plans to still chime in about video games from time to time (including our delayed best of 2023 series which will appear before the end of February), 2024 is the year in which he’ll be putting together some great pieces highlighting his favorite horror films from the first decade of our current century… or as many refer to it, “the Aughts”. Since this decade was also a very important one for my horror tastes and sensibilities, I will be joining him in this venture, highlighting some of my faves, as well. Each installment will be dubbed an “issue” in keeping with our early 2000s theme – think of it as our very own horror fanzine… something that punks, film nerds, and other weirdos like us will remember as a big part of the 90s and aughts. If you head over to the first issue, you can read Eric explaining the column’s inspiration himself – thepaintedman]
Let me tell you, I miss the heyday of Dark Castle Entertainment, a horror-focused production company started out by Tales from the Crypt alumni – but also major directors and producers in their own right – Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis and Gilbert Adler. Their first release was the remake of House on Haunted Hill in 1999, and they would proceed to deliver a slew of remakes and original IP’s throughout the 2000’s before dying down later that decade. The main thing I loved about Dark Castle was that they produced horror flicks with a BUDGET. Nowadays, horror films tend to be in the low single digits in terms of budget, with the occasional dipping its toes into the teens, a trend that was truly made the norm by Blumhouse Productions. Not Dark Castle. Their initial feature, House on Haunted Hill, carried a production budget of $37 million. Their follow-up, the remake of Thirteen Ghosts, kicked it up a notch to the tune of a $42 million budget. Corners were not cut on a Dark Castle film. Large well-known casts, extravagant sets and lavish special effects were commonplace, and I loved every piece of film of these films that just oozed production value at every turn. Of course, this joyous spending on horror couldn’t last forever, but we did get another $40 million dollar masterpiece in 2005, and it is probably my favorite of the Dark Castle films. This would be none other than Jaume Collet-Serra’s mean-spirited and violent good time remake of the classic Vincent Price flick, 2005’s House of Wax.
Six hot young twenty-somethings are traveling to a college football game. Fraternal twins Carly and Nick (Elisha Cuthbert/Chad Michael Murray), one is sweet while the other is just a bad boy, Carly’s sweet and goof of a BF Wade (Jared Padalecki), resident clown Dalton (Jon Abrahams), and power couple Blake and Paige (Robert Ri’chard/Paris Hilton). Feeling they will not be able to make it to their destination before sundown, they decide to camp out. After waking the next morning and discovering one of their cars is malfunctioning, Carly and Wade decide to go to town and see if they can find assistance. They arrive in Ambrose, home to the “world famous” House of Wax. After getting there, they begin to realize that nothing is as it seems, and they are all about to become fodder for a murderous set of twins Bo and Vincent (both played by Brian Van Holt). Will the six be able to fight their way out of this madness, or will they just become the next exhibit on display?
I initially missed this in theaters during its original theatrical run, and I can’t 100% confirm why. Perhaps it was the marketing campaign that seemed to focus on the fact that you could “See Paris Die”, which led to shirts and marketing materials being produced pushing this notion. I also might have been a touch of a horror snob back then, saw Paris Hilton was in it, saw all the marketing seemingly all about her and not the actual film and gave it a disheartening shrug. If so, that was stupid and ignorant on my part, and I am glad I am not as close-minded today. Considering its $32M total box office in the US, many people did not turn out for this absolute banger of a film initially (perhaps for the reason I stated above, perhaps others), and we were wrong for doing so. House of Wax slaps in so many ways, it’s hard for me to narrow my focus down and start to list off all the awesomeness. I will attempt to do this now.
First off, the cast. There is so much HOT leaking off the screen from this WB-heavy lineup that my screen began to catch fire. Elisha Cuthbert is at the height of her pure gorgeousness, Chad Michael Murray is all smoldering and “mysterious”, Jared Padalecki is a big old skinny teddy bear, Paris Hilton is… well, Paris Hilton, which is to say, beautiful, and Robert Ri’chard has a likable charm and look that just rounds out the cast wonderfully. No shade to him, but I do feel a little bad for Jon Abrahams amongst all this beefcake and beauty, but I feel like he is the avatar for how I feel and look personally, so he belongs here and asserts himself well. One peculiar thing about the cast is the unfortunate aspect that the fraternal twins of Chad Michael Murray and Elisha Cuthbert have extremely palatable sexual chemistry in this movie, more so than Cuthbert and supposed BF Padalecki. Lends itself an incestuous vibe, especially in the back half of the flick, but with people this hot, we can let that slide… somewhat.
The entire town of Ambrose was built from the ground up and it truly shines on the screen. Not one dollar is wasted of that $40 million and it is all slapped out there on the celluloid for all to enjoy. Off the bat, we need a special shoutout to production designer Graham “Grace” Walker. Lavish set design, beautiful art direction of the town and its wax-covered inhabitants, and a great sense of spatial awareness (a Wes Craven staple, allowing the viewer to be able to map out the terrain based on how the film is shot) all lend a real-world feel. It also doesn’t hurt that we shot this thing in the middle of nowhere too, not on some soundstage The practical gore effects are also super topflight. Multiple people getting encased in wax whilst sitting in a weird Saw-like chair to keep them from moving, fingers snipped off, Achilles tendons snapped in half, heads lopped off with a pair of shears, and an admittedly gloriously brutal death for Paris Hilton that concludes an amazing chase sequence through a warehouse. Speaking of said chase scene, it is the highlight of the film, but we get multiple high intensity cat-and-mouse chases throughout – Carly, Dalton and Nick all get in on the fun – and these are expertly shot and choregraphed by at-the-time 1st time director Serra. He would go on to deliver some absolute bangers in the genre with 2009’s batshit Orphan and 2016’s tense and tight shark flick The Shallows, but he cut his teeth here and shows he has the chops for tense and brutal horror. The third act set piece that takes place throughout the titular house of wax is, however, the most technically impressive part of the movie. Everything is made of wax – the floor, the doors, the furniture – and Serra really revels in playing with expectations as the two lone survivors battle through the house trying to get away and avoid the blade of the evil twins Bo and Vincent. The image of one of the killers peeling his way through a wax door, which immediately follows him cutting through said door with a knife and sliding down through a conjoined twin baby wax figure, is horror at its most beautiful.
House of Wax is a grungy and filthy movie, but also one of great beauty and vision with the masterful eye of director Collet-Serra and the production budget muscle of Dark Castle. The cast is great and beautiful as hell, the effects are topflight and 99% practical, and the set design is simply some of the best that has even been put on screen, rivaling sweeping Oscar-bait epics, and I mean that. I know the phrase is overused and makes me feel like the old man shaking his fist at the skies, but truly and deeply I mean this, “They don’t make them like they used to anymore”.
