YMMV / House of Wax (2005)

• Base-Breaking Character: Paris Hilton as Paige. The woman's massive hatedom felt she was terrible in the role and she got a Razzie for it. Others felt she was fine. Roger Ebert noted that Paris Hilton played a character who got horribly killed, in typical slasher movie fashion. She did this no better or worse than other actresses who play the Disposable Woman in other slasher films.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: If the movie isn't mentioned for Paris Hilton getting killed, it'll be for the sexy striptease she does for her boyfriend.
• Critic-Proof: The film was trashed by critics (although some were kind to it) but it made $70 million at the Box Office.
• Critical Backlash: It's been theorised that a lot of the hate for the movie stems just from Paris Hilton being in it, regardless of whether her performance was good or not.
• Critical Dissonance: Despite being savaged by critics, even being nominated for a Razzie in 2006 for Worst Picture, general consensus among horror movie fans is that it's merely So Okay, It's Average and that there are much worse slasher films out there. Indeed, over time it has even developed something of a cult following.
• Dancing Bear: A middle of the road slasher flick that advertised itself with the opportunity to see Paris Hilton die.
• Genius Bonus:
  • When Carly and Nick are hiding in the cinema from Bo, the movie playing is What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. What's the twist in that film? That the apparent 'good' sibling in contrast to a mentally ill 'bad' one is Evil All Along, and that the latter is really just a pawn of the other's manipulations. Rather apt for The Reveal with Bo and Vincent.
  • Nick and Bo's final fistfight in the burning Museum is homage to the fistfight between Jarrod (Vincent Price) and Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) at the start of the 1953 film, with the wax figures melting around the two men like decomposing corpses. Some shots in the 2005 fight scene even look almost identical to the shots of the melting wax figures in the 1953 version.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact that the first victim in the film is Jared Padalecki - as he's the only one of the cast members who has gone on to play a monster hunter. Paris Hilton guest starred in an episode of that too.
  • Elisha Cuthbert as the Final Girl, who's also an Action Survivor can be very amusing to anyone who saw her as the infamous Damsel Scrappy on 24.
  • One character is revealed to be wax by having his face fall off. Paris Hilton herself would experience something like that in Repo! The Genetic Opera.
• Hollywood Homely: Dalton is meant to be the ugly friend that Carly wouldn't have a chance with, and there's even a joke scene in which the girls try to give him a makeover. Jon Abrahams is given a shaggy 'surfer dude' hairstyle and baggy clothes to make him appear less attractive. They do at least mention his always stinking due to his job (and wearing his work clothes to the trip) and having an off-putting personality.
• It Was His Sled: Just about everyone knows that Paris Hilton's character gets killed off. It's even part of the promotion for the movie.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Vincent would qualify, as he was originally the Abel to Bo's Cain, but manipulated into being a Serial Killer like Bo. The last shot of Vincent following his death as he is submerged in the pool of wax was a Alas, Poor Villain for him.
  • Nick as well, despite being a bit of a delinquent. His parents continually favoured Carly over him, causing him to think of himself as the Evil Twin. He's a good guy deep down, taking the blame for a car Dalton stole and he ultimately cares a lot for his sister.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Most people only watched the film for the chance to see Paris Hilton get killed. This was invoked by Paris herself, as she produced a line of t-shirts with the film's release date and the caption "See Paris Die". There were reports of cheering in the cinemas during her death scene.
• Moral Event Horizon: If Bo hasn't crossed this by turning innocent people into wax figures, then him clipping off the tip of Carly's finger for no real reason (complete with Slasher Smile) definitely pushes it this far.
• Narm:
  • Carly's forced and unnatural sounding laughs when she's on the phone to Paige.
  • The reveal that the whole museum is made of wax, with no foundations or anything. The whole place would have collapsed the first time there was really bad weather.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • Carly falls into a pit of animal carcasses. As well as the mud and blood everywhere, maggots are also visible among the bodies.
  • Wade gets his whole body covered in hot wax, and it peels his skin off! When Vincent slashes at Dalton, he slices off the side of Wade's face, and we get a gruesome shot of what's left.
  • Poor Carly ends up getting the tip of her finger cut off and her lips glued together. She has to separate them, leaving her mouth quite bloody.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The entire film, in all honesty, but the opening sequence to start everything off, an unseen woman is seen in the kitchen boiling wax to make face masks, feeding her better behaved son, and then the father comes in holding the the more troubled son (the main villain of this film). the parents then strap their son to the other high chair (first his legs, then this hands), yelling at him and whatnot, whilst he is of course screaming, and then the boy scratches his mother thus slapping him hard in the face. The unseen faces, the dialogue, the lighting, the quickness of the scene, all adds to the intensity, and as if child abuse is not scary enough in real life.
    • The film, thankfully, has a much tamer alternative opening. A woman is stranded on the road after her car breaks down, and as she calls towing, Bo drives up in his truck, the woman tries to signal him receiving no response, and then the truck speeds up.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jared Padalecki as Wade and Chad Michael Murray (aka Jack Thompson and Edgar Evernever) as Nick. Both were admittedly decently known thanks to Gilmore Girls and One Tree Hill, but Elisha Cuthbert and Paris Hilton were the bigger names at the time.
• So Okay, It's Average: Now that the collective hatedom surrounding Paris Hilton in the early 2000s has subsided, the film is viewed as a perfectly fine slasher flick. Not amazing but hardly terrible either.
  Roger Ebert: House of Wax is not a good movie but it is an efficient one, and will deliver most of what anyone attending House of Wax could reasonably expect, assuming it would be unreasonable to expect very much.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Vincent's CGI "disfigurement" wasn't perfectly tracked to the actor's face, so it sometimes moves independently. The resulting effect is jarring.
  • The ridiculous display of the entire wax museum melting during the climax. While the interior looks passable, the exterior shots of the window panes and walls melting and ultimately collapsing is just mid-00's CGI at it's worst.
• Squick: One guy has a... peeling problem. And there's plenty more where that one moment came from.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The twist involving Bo being the evil and violent twin and Vincent being the deformed, but good twin instead of vice versa as the movie implied would have been a fairly interesting story element that could have been utilized as sort of a Foil to Carly and Nick’s relationship, especially after the buildup involving the opening and the emphasis and the discovery of the high chairs in the museum. Unfortunately after the revelation, it is never truly addressed aside from Carly trying to reason with Vincent during the final confrontation, and as a result, it ends up feeling tacked onto an otherwise generic slasher flick.