House of Wax

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

This movie gives it to you, as no movie has in some years. Okay, if that's not your part of the swamp, don't go into it.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

After a month, no one will talk about this movie, ever again. Still, with a picture like this, there's really only one question: Is it any fun? Yes. Lots. Definitely.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

As a frightfest it's better than today's average.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

House of Wax won't give you nightmares, but it upholds teen horror traditions with flair and energy.

Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand

A sturdy and cohesive representative of what tends to be a flimsy and tawdry B-movie genre. It even has a moral: People who live in wax houses shouldn't start fires.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Formulaic but fairly well-done.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

Sadly, director Jaume Serra has taken the Gothic premise of a madman casting his living victims in wax and, no doubt at the behest of copycat-hungry producers, turned House of Wax into yet another teens-versus-hillbillies slasher flick

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The original was shot in 3-D; this, by contrast, is 1-D all the way.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Like too many horror movies these days, House of Wax goes for scares, but settles for being gory and deeply unpleasant.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Works best when it sticks to some of the tenets of successful horror; namely, gore and surprise.

Chicago Sun-Times 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.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's a good thing Jaume Serra's House of Wax wasn't shot in 3-D like the original 1953 horror classic - Paris Hilton is in it and she doesn't have a third dimension.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Treats us to some feverish decapitating, juicy stabbing and non-anesthetized fingertip removal.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The set design is fairly elaborate by the standards of the genre, and the victims don't die in precisely the order you might expect, but everything else goes pretty much according to formula, including a last-minute plot twist that opens the creaky door to a sequel.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The problem is that the writing is too weak for me to come close to recommending it.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Acting is similarly routine with the glorious exception of Hilton, who is so bad she steals the show.

Village Voice Benjamin Strong

Only a nominal remake...Nevertheless, for gore aficionados (and probably no one else) the murders are worth the wait.

Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling

Except for when Paris is on screen giving us the winking sex eye, Wax is just a museum of gory, joyless, easy shocks.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Gratuitous gore and young, nubile flesh bind together a cardboard plot.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Boring.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

Manages to be gruesome and grisly, but not particularly creepy or frightening.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

Expect lots of Slasher Movie 101.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufmann

This is slash and burn strictly by the numbers. There's never an ounce of doubt where the movie's going; the only suspense is how long it's going to take to get there and how high the body count is going to get.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It delivers some bracingly nasty gore scenes, but there's no spark left in the run-scream-repeat formula, and a movie whose biggest draw is profoundly untalented hotel-fortune heiress Paris Hilton is in desperate need of some juice.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Paris Hilton is the big draw in Jaume Collet-Serra's not-really-a-remake horror-slasher thriller House of Wax, and she'd have to be: There's so little else going on in it that you find yourself waiting for her few brief scenes.

Slate David Edelstein

Isn't bad as these things go, although these things go nowhere a healthy individual should want to. Having never claimed to be a healthy individual, I found it tolerable.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

For Hilton haters, the stupid and grotesque remake of House of Wax will only stoke their schadenfreude.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

You'll be rooting for these people to get slaughtered out of sheer boredom.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Related to the 1953 Vincent Price film in name, embalming technique and Warner Bros. pedigree only, the new House of Wax is a dreary, predictable tale.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Overlong, unscary, poorly paced and banally written.

USA Today Mike Clark

When the cast starts wondering where the roadkill is, someone says, "Follow the smell." Good tip: That's how you'll know where Wax is playing.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Weak, obligatory stabs at humor make it more generic than it might've been.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

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.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

A sadistically bland entertainment that oversells its reveals and lets its suspense drip so long that it would be nice if something (anything!) happened.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Barf-bag baroque.

Variety Scott Foundas

Direly predictable, with candle-drip pacing and a pervasive unpleasantness.