| House of Wax | |
|---|---|
| |
| Riffed by | RiffTrax Presents |
| Riffers | Matthew J. Elliott |
| Series | None |
| Date Released | May 28, 2008 |
House of Wax is a 2005 Australian-American horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams, and Robert Ri'chard. It is sometimes called a remake of the 1953 film of the same name, which was itself a remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, but the 2005 film's plot is completely different from the story told by the two earlier films. Released theatrically on May 6, 2005, the film received a general negative critical reception, earning however over $70 million. RiffTrax Presents released their riff in May 2008.
Plot Synopsis[]
Spoilers Begin
In 1974, a woman is making a wax sculpture in the kitchen while her son eats breakfast in his highchair. Her husband enters with another son who is shouting and kicking. The boy is forced into a highchair and strapped in place. He kicks the table, causing her sculpture to fall onto the floor and scratch his mother's hand. She ends the commotion by slapping the misbehaved child across the face.
In 2005, Carly (Elisha Cuthbert); her twin brother, Nick (Chad Michael Murray); her boyfriend, Wade (Jared Padalecki); her best friend, Paige (Paris Hilton); Paige's boyfriend, Blake (Robert Ri'chard); and Nick's friend, Dalton (Jon Abrahams) are on their way to a highly anticipated football game in Louisiana. Night falls and the group decides to set up camp for the night. A hideous smell waves through the air, but they ignore it. The campsite is later visited by a stranger in a pickup truck who shines his lights at the campsite, but refuses to leave or address them until Nick smashes one of the pickup truck's headlights with a bottle. The next morning, Wade find his car's fan belts to be damaged. Shortly after, while in the woods, Paige and Carly smell that same smell from the night before. While looking for its cause, Carly falls in a carcass-filled area in the forest. While rescuing her, the group runs into a disheveled, rural man named Lester (Damon Herriman), who offers to drive Wade and Carly to the nearby town of Ambrose to get a new fan belt, while the rest of them go to the football game.
The two arrive at Ambrose, which is virtually a ghost town. Unable to find an attendant at the auto mechanics shop, they wander into the church, disrupting a funeral. There, they meet a mechanic named Bo (Brian Van Holt), who offers to sell them a fan belt after the funeral. While waiting for the service to end, the two teens visit the wax museum, which itself is made of wax and is the central feature of the town. Afterward, they follow Bo to his house to find a proper fan belt. Wade follows Bo into his house, and gets stabbed by a mysterious figure in the dark. Outside, Carly learns that Bo's car is the same one that visited them the night before. She gets attacked by Bo and runs to the church, only to find that the ongoing funeral is populated only by wax sculptures. She is captured by Bo and imprisoned in a cellar, taped to a chair with her lips glued together. Meanwhile, Wade is brought to a room, where the figure strips him off his clothes and is shaved by the figure. The figure then straps him to a chair and sprays wax all over his naked body.
Due to standstill traffic, Blake, Paige, Nick and Dalton realize they're not going to make it to the game in time, and return to the campsite. Nick and Dalton offer to head to Ambrose to fetch Carly and Wade while Paige and Blake remain at the campsite.
In Ambrose, also finding the town completely vacant, Dalton and Nick split up. Dalton heads to the wax museum, and he encounters a wax-covered Wade standing by a piano. After noticing he was alive, Dalton tries to remove the wax, but ends up tearing his cheek away. The mysterious figure appears, kills Wade and chases Dalton. While running, Dalton falls downstairs and is beheaded. Meanwhile, Nick finds Bo and asks him about Carly's whereabouts. While attempting to catch her brother's attention, Carly gets her finger chopped off by Bo. She tears her own lips open and screams for help. Nick finds and saves her, while Bo disappears. Soon after, they realize that the only inhabitants of the town are the sons of the wax museum's proprietors, who have been trapping their victims for the creation of wax sculptures.
Back at the campsite, Paige and Blake are about to have sex when Blake hears a noise outside and investigates leaving Paige in the tent by herself. Some time later someone enters the tent. Paige thinks it's Blake but it turns out to be the killer. Paige flees the tent and slips over Blake who has been stabbed in the neck. She gets up and flees to an abandoned sugar mill while the killer shoves the knife further into Blake's neck killing him. Paige arrives at the sugar mill but the killer stabs her in the foot from underneath. Paige hides in a car using a pole as a weapon. The killer finds her but she escapes again dropping the pole and hiding behind another car. Thinking that the killer has gone Paige stares through the car window only for the killer to throw the pole she dropped earlier through the car windows which penetrates her forehead killing her instantly.
The two owners, Bo and the mysterious figure Vincent Sinclair were conjoined twins separated at birth, during which process Vincent was horribly disfigured. His father attempted to fix it by building him a wax mask. Bo soon finds them and chases Carly to a movie theatre. She runs away, and he is shot twice with an arrow. While in the wax house, the duo are chased by Vincent, and set fire in the building's basement to cut their attackers off. The fire spreads through the museum, slowly melting it down. Carly soon bludgeons Bo with a baseball bat, and runs upstairs, having Vincent going after her. Nick attempts to follow them, but his leg gets stuck in the melting stairs. As he frees himself and goes up, the first floor melts down. Carly kills Vincent and the duo escapes from the wax museum as it melts to the ground, burying the two tragically disturbed brothers in their own work.
The next morning, the smoke from the fire has drawn help from outside and police and rescue workers sift through evidence throughout the town. The sheriff informs the group that the town has been abandoned for a decade, since its sugar mill closed down, and it does not even appear on maps anymore. Over the radio, police discuss the Sinclair had a third son. The film closes and implies that Lester, who had driven the teens to the town earlier, is the third son.
Spoilers End
Cast and Crew[]
- Elisha Cuthbert as Carly Jones
- Chad Michael Murray as Nick Jones
- Brian Van Holt as Bo Sinclair / Vincent Sinclair
- Paris Hilton as Paige Edwards
- Jared Padalecki as Wade
- Jon Abrahams as Dalton Chapman
- Robert Ri'chard as Blake Johnson
- Damon Herriman as Lester Sinclair
- Andy Anderson as Sheriff
- Dragitsa Debert as Trudy Sinclair
- Murray Smith as Dr. Victor Sinclair
- Emma Lung as Jennifer