House of Wax - movie poster Photo

House of Wax

Starring: Chad Michael Murray, Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

RS: 1of 4 Stars

2005 Warner Bros. Pictures Thriller

Purists, be warned: This scare-flick quickie has as much relation to the 1953 Vincent Price classic with the same title as Paris Hilton does to acting. It's Hilton and her five Louisiana homeys -- smart girl Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray as her twin, Jared Padalecki as her true love, Robert Richard as Hilton's boy toy and Jon Abrahams as the guy with the camcorder -- who decide to interrupt their drive to a college football game and camp out. Hilton, the hotel heiress, roughing it? Hello!

That's the first of many museum-quality horror cliches, directed by Jaume Serra (he does commercials -- can you imagine?), from a script by twins Chad and Carey Hayes, about twins (both played by Brian Van Holt) who like fresh bodies to make the figures in their wax museum look especially lifelike. Not with these actors. Hilton runs the gamut of emotions from A to A-minus, and the others look desperate to forget that this dazzlingly dumb debacle will be on their resumes. There is a major fire at the end. Now that's hot.