House of Wax is a 2005 horror film, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. It is a loose remake of the
1953 movie of the same name starring
Vincent Price and the 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum. It was released to theaters May
6, 2005, and to DVD on October 25, 2005.
Plot summary
The film opens in 1974 with a pot of molten wax bubbling on a gas stove. A woman ladles some of the wax into a mold of a face
as her son quietly enjoys some cereal. She offers him more as another boy—who is struggling and resisting—is forcefully carried
into the kitchen by his father. Dr. Sinclare tries to put the screaming boy into his high chair but the boy kicks the table
causing the face mold to go crashing to the floor and shatter into pieces. The two parents have to restrain him into the high
chair as he kicks the table again, bumping his (much more behaved) brother's high chair and spilling some cereal and knocking a
toy off the table. Trudy proceeds to duct tape the unruly boy's wrists to the high chair. The boy's wrists are scarred from the
restraints and the tray of the high chair is stained with blood. The boy scratches Trudy on the hand. Trudy slaps the boy across
the face in retaliation and the screen goes dark.
The movie cuts to the present day where Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her boyfriend,
Wade (Jared Padalecki), have hit the road to attend a LSU/Florida college football game.
They are joined by Carly's friend Paige (Paris Hilton), Paige's boyfriend Blake
(Robert Ri'chard), Carly's twin brother Nick (Chad
Michael Murray), and Nick's immature but funny best friend Dalton (Jon Abrahams).
While camping out for the night, the group has an altercation with an unknown local. This local stopped his truck near their
campsite, shining its lights on the group and refusing to respond to the friends' salutations and questions. Nick then throws a
bottle at the truck, breaking one of its headlights. The driver does nothing but back away and drive off after the bottle is
thrown. The identity of the driver is unknown save for a brief shot of his arm dangling out the window, making visible the
scarring on his wrist. The next morning they discover that Wade's car will not start—the fan belt had snapped overnight. The
group decides to split up, with Carly and Wade hitching a ride into town with another mysterious local who disposes of roadkill,
and the rest continuing on their trip to the football game in Blake's truck.
During Carly and Wade's ride into the town of Ambrose, the conversation with the local who has offered to drive them turns
sour and they decide to part ways with him shortly before arriving into town. After exploring the town gas station and the
surrounding area, they find no one and it seems the town is deserted. They hear music coming from the town chapel at the top of
the hill and follow it. Upon entering the chapel, they are embarrassed to find that they have interrupted a funeral service. A
man who is kneeling at the coffin in the front of the church scowls back at them for barging in. Carly quickly apologizes and
closes the door. The man then walks out, scolds them for interrupting, and then walks back inside. Soon after, the man (Bo)
returns outside and apologizes for his tone. The pair explain their situation to Bo and Bo informs them that he owns the gas
station and is willing to provide them with the fan belt they need to fix their car. He tells the couple that he will be back to
meet them in half an hour, after he is done at the chapel.
The pair decide to explore the rest of the town and stumble upon the House of Wax nearby. They find that that the building is
made entirely out of wax, and, while there is a 'Closed' sign on the door, it is unlocked and they decide to go in. The pair
explore the house, eerily impressed by the freakishly lifelike sculptures. Carly discovers that many of the sculptures, as well
as the art hanging on the walls, were done by someone named Vincent. In the corner of one of the rooms, Carly sees two high
chairs—one of them has Vincent's name on it while the other is unreadable to the camera. Carly clears some dust from a mirror and
in the reflection spots a mysterious figure peering in through a window behind her from outside. Freaked out, she asks to leave.
Wade agrees, and the pair make their exit.
It has been over thirty minutes since they left the chapel, and with no sign of Bo, Carly and Wade decide to walk back to the
unlocked gas station and obtain the fan belt they need on their own. The gas station's garage has fan belts of all sizes except
for the size Wade needs for his car, so he decides to grab the next size up. Bo suddenly appears as Wade turns around to leave.
Wade apologizes for his impatience, reassuring Bo that he had no intentions of stealing the belt and had left money on the
counter for what he picked out. Bo tells Wade and Carly that he actually has the right size fan belt up at his house, and invites
them to come with him to get it. The three of them walk up to Bo's house. Once outside, Carly decides to wait in Bo's truck while
Wade enters to use the restroom while Bo goes in to change and get the fan belt.
After using the restroom, Wade's curiosity is aroused by an adjacent room containing strange creatures preserved in glass jars
as well as some sort of examination room with stretchers and surgical equipment. As he is wandering the room, the lights go out
and Wade is attacked by someone who entered through a trap door in the floor. Carly, growing worried and impatient outside, honks
the horn. Wade is then seen being dragged down a tunnel and put onto a table. He is stripped, sedated, and his wounds are sewn up
by the mysterious figure who attacked him. Meanwhile, Carly gets out of the car as Bo exits the house. She begins to panic upon
noticing that Bo's truck has a broken headlight. She questions Bo about Wade's whereabouts, and Bo insists that Wade must still
be in the restroom if he hasn't come outside yet. Wade is then seen sitting in a device that sprays hot wax all over his body.
Carly and Bo begin to struggle over control of the truck. Carly manages to elude Bo for a short while until Bo finally apprehends
her, carries her to the gas station, and confines her to a chair in the basement to torture and rape her.
Having given up on trying to make the football game due to traffic, Blake, Paige, Nick, and Dalton decide to turn around and
return to the campsite to await Carly and Wade's return. Eventually, Nick and Dalton decide to make their way to Ambrose to meet
up with Carly and Wade as well as give Paige and Blake some time alone. Nick and Dalton split up to find their friends upon
arriving in town and Dalton discovers the House of Wax. After discovering that Wade has been recently made into one of the
sculptures in the museum, Dalton is decapitated by the same person who turned Wade into a wax figure. After dealing with Dalton,
the killer takes a tow truck from the gas station and leaves. Nick and Carly—having recently been reunited, decide this is a good
opportunity to find Dalton and Wade and make their escape. Back at the campsite, Blake is stabbed in the throat by the killer and
Paige attempts an escape within a nearby abandoned factory. After a few near misses, Paige is finally killed by having a pipe
impaled through her skull.
Carly and Nick discover that the whole town is made out of wax figures—from the mourners in the chapel earlier in the day to
an old woman in one building that seemed to peer through the curtains now and again (the woman was simply rigged to 'pull' at the
curtains and peer outside using some sort of mechanical rigging). The siblings break into a hunting shop and grab a crossbow as
Bo returns with a shotgun. They elude Bo inside the movie theater and hide from him among the 'audience.' As Bo walks through the
auditorium trying to tell Nick and Carly apart from the sculptures, Nick springs from behind and manages to shoot Bo in the arm
and in the chest, incapacitating him. Leaving Bo for dead, Nick and Carly head back to the house to see if Dalton and Wade are
still alive somewhere.
While searching through the house, Carly finds newspaper clippings and family photos that explains the mystery of the Sinclair
family. Vincent and Bo were conjoined twins joined at the head and their father, Dr.
Sinclair, was the man who separated the brothers using a controversial procedure. As can be seen in the photos after the
separation, half of Vincent's face was missing and his mother made him wax masks in order to hide the deformity. Carly and Nick
hide when Bo—still alive after being shot twice with arrows—enters and proceeds to yank the arrow from his arm and trim down the
one lodged in his chest. The tow truck then pulls up in front of the house, towing Blake's pickup with Paige and Blake's bodies
stowed in the bed of the truck. The brothers argue when Vincent enters the house until Bo notices a that a photo is out of place
in the living room. Concluding that Nick and Carly are somewhere in the house, Bo and Vincent renew their search for the
surviving pair.
Nick and Carly attempt an escape through the underground tunnel connecting the Sinclair home to the wax museum. Upon reaching
Vincent's workshop, they find Dalton's dead body strapped to the same machine that covered Wade in wax. Vincent has caught up to
the siblings at this point and a fight ensues. Nick manages to escape upstairs with Carly when he topples a vat of hot wax and
the workshop begins to catch fire. Bo is waiting for the pair upstairs and attacks Nick, eventually stabbing him in the leg while
the entire museum begins to melt from the fires raging in the workshop below. Carly ends the scuffle by beating Bo to death with
the baseball bat she had been carrying. Vincent, escaping the fire in the workshop, sees Bo's battered body and flies into a
rage, leaving Nick behind and chasing Carly to the second floor of the increasingly softening and collapsing building.
Carly attempts to reason with Vincent, to no avail. Nick returns to help his sister and a struggle for Vincent's knife begins.
During the struggle, Nick yanks off Vincent's wax mask to reveal the hole in his skull. Carly pulls the knife lodged in Nick's
leg and stabs Vincent with it repeatedly. Vincent falls through the now unstable floor into the workshop below and is engulfed by
the flames. The siblings manage to escape the house before it comes down on top of them.
Nick and Carly are now in an ambulance as police and rescue workers sift through evidence throughout the town. As the pair are
being driven out of Ambrose, the movie cuts back to the sheriff who receives word on his radio that the Sinclairs didn't have two
sons, but three. The film ends with a shot of the strange local that originally drove Wade and Carly into town, waving at Carly
from the bed of his truck with Vincent's dog at his side.
Deaths
- Wade (death by blood loss and slashing/stabbing):Wade is captured by Vincent and covered in
wax, turning him into another figure in the macabre House Of Wax. Vincent positions Wade at a piano on the main floor of the
museum. Later, he is discovered by Dalton who is then attacked by Vincent. In the process of the attack, Vincent accidentally
slashes Wade's face open, and leaves him to die. At the end of the movie,Wade's body sinks into the floor of the museum as fire
melts it away.
- Dalton (death by stabbing and decapitation): Dalton is killed by Vincent seconds after
he sees Wade's wax figure. After Vincent accidentally kills Wade, he pursues Dalton. Dalton finds his way to the basement stairs
where he is pushed by Vincent, and sent tumbling down them. As he recovers at the base of the stairs, Vincent walks down and
makes makeshift scissors with two knives. He then stabs Dalton in the neck with them, decapitating him in the process. Later,
Dalton's wax coated body is found by Nick and Carly.
- Blake (death by stabbing): Blake is killed when he goes to check out a failed radio,just as
he and Paige are about to have sex in their tent. Shortly after leaving the tent, Vincent enters it and tries to attack Paige.
However, she runs out, and trips, falling onto the floor of the woods. She looks next to her and screams as she sees Blake, with
a knife sticking out of his neck. He is gurgling and spewing blood. As Vincent pursues Paige, she runs towards an old factory.
While passing the dying Blake, Vincent steps on the knife in Blake's neck, pushing it in further, and killing him.
- Paige (death by impalement): While running from Vincent, Paige finds her way to an old
factory. She finds a sharp metal pole and hides in the back of an abandoned car. When Vincent opens the door of the car, Paige
stabs him in the face with it, and flees. This attack does little to Vincent, it just messes up his wax mask. Vincent takes the
metal pole and begins to look for Paige, who is hiding behind a car. As she gets to her knees to see if Vincent is coming,
Vincent throws the pole through the car window, impaling her through the head, killing her instantly.
- Bo (death by head trauma): After finding Dalton, Carly and Nick accidentally start a
fire in the Wax Museum while fighting off Vincent. The fire allows them to escape as Vincent is trapped behind a line of flames.
The hurry up to the main floor of the museum, where Bo attacks them. He throws Carly to the floor and stabs Nick in the leg. As
Bo beats up on Nick, Carly stands and strikes Bo over the head with a bat. Bo then falls to the floor, and Carly proceeds to bash
him in the face, killing him. Shortly after Bo's death, Vincent arrives. The fire in the basement melts a hole through the floor
of the museum, and then quickly spreads.
- Vincent (death by stabbing: Enraged by the death of his brother, Vincent chases Carly to
the second floor of the museum. Meanwhile, Nick, who still has a knife jabbed in his leg, slowly follows Vincent, wading through
puddles of wax melted by the spreading fire. Just as Carly is cornered by Vincent, Nick reaches them and jumps on Vincent. As
Vincent tries to kill Nick, Carly pulls the knife out of Nick's leg and stabs Vincent with it. Vincent moans and falls through
the floor as it melts away. He lands on his brother's corpse below, dead. Carly and Nick also fall through the floor, but escape
from the museum before it collapses by digging through a wall of melting wax.
Box office
Opening in 3,111 theaters, the movie grossed $12 million in its first three days. Though most critics were not impressed,
House of Wax earned $68,766,121 worldwide. 46.6% of that total came from domestic receipts. It also earned $42,000,000 in VHS/DVD
rentals.[2]
Lawsuit
In January 2006 it was announced by Warner Roadshow studio owners Village Theme Park Management
and Warner World Australia that they were suing special effects expert David Fletcher and Wax Productions because of a fire on
the set during production.
The $7 million lawsuit alleges that the Mr. Fletcher and Wax Productions were grossly negligent over the fire which destroyed
part of the Gold Coast's Warner Bros.
Movie World studios. The alleged grounds of negligence included not having firefighters on stand-by and using timber props
near a naked flame. The set where the fire broke out has now been demolished and a field kept for Movie World for future
projects.
Awards and nominations
House of Wax won three out of the seven awards it was nominated for at the 2005
Teen Choice Awards, was nominated for one MTV Movie Award, and won one and
was nominated for three Golden Raspberry Awards:[3]
Main Cast
Trivia
- The license plate on Wade's car are Florida license plates.
- Ambrose is a fictional town.
- Jon Abrahams was not featured in the trailer for individual credit, along with
Robert Ri'chard, leading people to think they would not have major parts.
- There are talks of a House of Wax 2, but there is no determined plot. Speculation is a plot
that centers around the third brother luring people into a reconstructed Ambrose. Elisha
Cuthbert mentioned that there might be a sequel in the works but did not confirm if her character would return.
- The main villain's name is Vincent, a reference to Vincent Price who starred in the
original House of Wax (1953).
Soundtrack
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See also
References
External links
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