by Adam Riske
• Best Scene/Moment (tie): Jon Abrahams trying to save wax Jared Padalecki and the finale with the melting House of Wax. It’s fantastic.
• Best Song: “Helena” by My Chemical Romance. This movie has a great soundtrack, btw.
• Director Grade: House of Wax (2005) was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.
Great Movies: N/A
Good Movies: House of Wax (2005), Orphan, Run All Night, The Shallows
OK Movies: N/A
Bad Movies: Non-Stop, The Commuter, Jungle Cruise
Unseen By Me: Goal II: Living the Dream, Unknown, Black Adam, Carry On, The Woman in the Yard
Overall Grade: B-
• Double It with This 2005 Movie: The Amityville Horror (2005)
• Year 2005 Movies to Trailer Before Them: Cry_Wolf, The Fog (2005), Venom
• Mall Movie? It must be, right? It’s Dark Castle after all. The only thing holding me back is the 112-minute runtime. Mall movies are usually shorter.
• Only in 2005: A horror movie where Paris Hilton factored heavily into the marketing.
• Scene Stealer: Brian Van Holt.
• I Miss: The Dark Castle logo.
• I Don’t Miss: The Jon Abrahams character. I have nothing against the actor. It's just that he played the same type of d-bag in a lot of movies during the early 2000s.
• 2025 Crush: Elisha Cuthbert.
• What I Thought in 2005: I loved it! I thought House of Wax (2005) was by far the best of the Dark Castle movies with great special effects and a standout finale. I also dug the Chad Michael Murray performance, which starts one way and then develops into something more appealing as he tries to escape the wax town with his sister (also played well by Elisha Cuthbert).
• What I Think in 2025: I don’t love it like I used to but I’m still a fan. What I appreciate the most nowadays is that the remake stands apart from the original House of Wax (with Vincent Price) and takes a new direction. Both can be enjoyed together as a double feature like The Blob (1958 & 1988). House of Wax (2005) is more of a remake of Tourist Trap, which isn’t a bad thing at all because that movie also rules.
House of Wax itself was a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, which was an early Technicolor production. Fay Wray was one its stars.
ReplyDeleteI remember that Paris Hilton phenomenon very clearly. I was living outside of the U.S. when she started to gain fame (for what reason?) and could not figure out who this Paris person was for a while. The Simple Life was such a ridiculous show.
1. House of Wax still way better than it has any right to be. Jaume Collet-Serra has too much skill at this sort of thing to make a cheap knock off or phone it in.
ReplyDelete2. I managed a theatre that used the "movie poster" mylars above each house. It was great and the staff loved it. They would put their names on a list for them just like it was a full-size poster and they were even great for incentives.
However, once we went to recliners and reserved seating, they became the bane of our existence. We'd have people sneak into theatres before but since seats weren't reserved, it didn't really seem to bother anyone. But... when you had seat E-8 and someone had snuck in and taken your seat... it quickly turned into one headache after another.
I couldn't switch to the generic "Theatre 1" mylars soon enough. Even the staff that loved taking the mylars home realized it was worth their mental health to move to generic. I do miss 'em, though.