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Oh, Paris Hilton. Before she donned the orange jumpsuit, she signed up to do a movie with Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, and Brian Van Holt. House of Wax was supposed to show off the hotel heiress’ acting skills, and well, it showed off her acting skills. Little did she realize how bad of an actress she is.

Her lines were delivered without emotion and she definitely carried the “I’m better than you” attitude throughout the entire film, in character or otherwise. It certainly didn’t help that the House of Wax plot was paper thin and delivered with absolutely no panache. Paige Edwards — as depicted by Paris Hilton above — was not scared of some crazy serial killer with a thing for dousing them in molten hot wax. She was afraid this incredibly crappy horror movie would ruin her hair or mar her wardrobe.

This film was originally released in 2005 and it received a lot of flack because of Paris Hilton. In truth, she plays a very minor part in House of Wax with Elisha Cuthbert (as Carly Jones) and Chad Michael Murray (as her brother Nick Jones) being the primary protagonists. Well, them and the guy that enjoys killing people and making them into living, breathing (sort of) wax figures for the House of Wax. I’m not going to ruin the plot twists for you, because those are the only things that keep this story a little interesting. The shock factor was okay, but it wasn’t until at least the final third of the 113-minute movie that you start to experience some gruesome deaths. And isn’t that the point of a slasher in the first place?

The one saving grace for me was that I watched House of Wax on Blu-ray, so I got to soak in the gushing blood and severed body parts in full high-definition. If you go into this movie with the right set of expectations, I suppose it doesn’t exactly disappoint — there’s some pretty cringe-worthy scenes — but it’s obviously far from Oscar material.

2 Stars out of 5