House of Wax, also known as Wax House, Baby is a 2005 horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (known for thrillers such as Orphan in 2009 and Unknown in 2001) about a group of teenagers stranded by a strange wax museum that have to fight for survival to avoid becoming a new wax figure at the hands of the town’s only surviving members. It is loosely based on the 1953 House of Wax, but has been revamped with a different storyline. The film's screenplay was by Chad and Carey Hayes and was distributed and produced by Warner Bro's Entertainment.
‘House of Wax’ perpetuates the Bulgarian structuralist
linguist Todorov’s work, as it does follow the basic of beginning with an
equilibrium, which is disrupted by an event setting off a chain of events,
creating disequilibrium. This is then resolved by the denouement and a new
equilibrium is settled at the end. At the start of the film, the 6 teenaged
friends head off on a road trip to a football game which is a typical scenario
for an American movie. This usual, everyday situation allows time for the movie
to explore the characters personalities and for the audience to understand the
dynamics of the friend group. The event that sets off a chain of events leading
to disequilibrium is when their car is sabotaged and they have to ask the
hunter (that turns out to be a third brother) for a lift to the nearby town.
Disequilibrium is everything that takes part within the town as the main
characters discover that almost everyone in the town is a wax figure leading to
the climatic melting of the waxhouse, killing Vincent. After this a new
equilibrium is created as the brother and sister will have to live on without
their 4 friends, however, this calm at the end of the film is disturbed because
of the revelation that the hunter is one of the brothers.
When an audience goes to watch a horror film, there are
certain elements they expect to see in order for them to properly identify with
it being a horror film. Much of horror films is actually suspense and in order
to create this, the film has to create the right atmosphere. The elements of
House Of Wax that perpetuate the genre include setting, camera work, lighting
and iconography. The film is set in a secluded, rural community which promotes
a feeling of isolation especially when the characters discover everyone else in
the town is made of wax except the murderers. The town has a past, specifically
the boys past in which Bo was abused and turned psychotic by his parents and
Vincent was the conjoined twin who ended up with a deformed face which leads to
the creation of his wax face, perpetuating the convention of a covered/hidden
face and ambiguous identity. The use of underground passages where the brothers
turn people into wax and control the town is usual of horror films as basements
and underground lairs are supposed to connote our primitive instincts. Technical
code such as lighting from unexpected angles, unsettling jumps in editing, the
use of ambient sounds such as footsteps and unusual, expressive shots are also
made use of in this film and the genre in general to create suspense and shock
for the audience. Iconography in the film was the use of very pale skin
matched with long dark hair on Vincent to create a ghostly look not dis-similar
to The Grudge which audiences would associate with fear.
As Horror dates back to the very early 20th
century, there has been plenty of time to create the genre expectations as mentioned
before, however these can be very useful for film directors to oppose as well,
shocking the audience into a false sense of security, then frightening them
suddenly. This can also be used in the narrative structure of films and by
contrasting to the usual expectations that the viewers have, such as allowing
the final girls brother to survive as well, you can confuse them which creates
more disconcertment. The ambiguous ending of the film where you discover the
hunter is actually a third brother creates an unsettling atmosphere and the
possibility for a spin off sequel about him.
In terms of House of Wax’s place in the history of horror, gore
returned with a vengeance in the 2000’s and the terms 'gore-nography' and other
similar terms came into existence to describe the new breed of movies that try
to titillate the audience with excessive amounts of gore. This spawned series of
movies such as Hostel (2005). House of Wax isn’t quite ‘gore-nography’ as the
story line isn’t only focused on violence, however there are many deaths and gory
attacks in the film which meet this genre. An example of this is Paris Hiltons
death which goes on for many minutes as she is chased in her underwear from the
campsite and ends up impaled on a pole.
A Russian theorist named Propp examined hundreds of examples
of folk tales to see if they shared any structures and identified 8 characters
that were mostly present. They were: the villain(s), the hero, the donor (who provides
an object with some magic property), the helper that aids the hero, the
princess (the sought after person) who is the reward for the hero and object of
the villain’s schemes, her father who rewards the hero, the dispatcher and the
false hero. Although horror films obviously differ from folk tales analysed a
century ago, many of these character types are still visible in the horror
genre, often tweaked such as the idea of the hero. The hero in horror films now
tends to be a ‘final girl’ who is often in need of rescuing (the princess) but
ultimately defeats the villain. The character types obvious in House Of Wax are
the hero, the villains and the dispatcher (who turns out to be a villain
himself). Another theorist who is important when looking at horror film
analysis is Levi-Strauss who looked at narrative structure in terms of binary
oppositions. These are sets of contrasting values which show the structure of
media texts such as films. The binary oppositions set up in House Of Wax included
good/evil, natural/artificial, life/death and sanity/insanity.
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