It's rare these days when a film actually gets better in the second act, especially if that film is of the horror variety. HOUSE OF WAX starts out as yet another "spam in a cabin" rehash (to borrow a phrase from venerable "blood, breasts and beasts" critic Joe Bob Briggs). A classic example of this formula is FRIDAY THE 13TH.

I'm sure you can think of many other films where young loose kids make a wrong turn and get chased by a slice happy maniac. It's a plot line we've seen many, many times and, due to the success of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake, one we'll have to endure for a while longer. HOUSE OF WAX, though, is really about two sets of twins.

One figuratively, the other literally. First we have Carly and Nick Jones (Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray respectively). Nick has just been released on bail.

He blames his sister Carly for being the one who "ratted" him out in the first place. When they were young, Carly was called the good twin. Nick was the evil one.

It's something they're still trying to reconcile. The other set of twins are glimpsed in a faceless display of child abuse during the film's opening. A secret Carly, Nick and their friends stumble upon while taking a short cut to the big football game.

While looking for a gas station, Carly and her ill fated boyfriend discover a backwater town. Though forgotten, the town still seems centered around its once infamous House of Wax. The ghoulish exhibits within are the work of a reclusive wax maker named Vincent (get it?

). It's no spoiler to anyone familiar with the 1953 Vincent Price original (do you get it now?) or this film's trailer that the wax figures were once real people.

After some sadistic maiming and torture, the kids are to be added to the collection. So far, our low expectations are settling in. Then something happens around the midway point, something wonderful for horror fans.

Once director Jaume Serra has satisfied the marketing demands for squeezing in a cast of bland youth, he can get down to some serious horror work. It all begins with the wax maker going to work on one of his victims. After hamstringing his prey with a pair of wire cutters, Vincent mends his wounds, paralyzes him with an injection, waxes off all his body hair and straps him into some sort of S M rig for the final coating.

The methodology with which this murder is committed is ghoulishly mesmerizing. It's only the beginning . Another scene of discomfort involves the consequences of living tissue being coated in boiling wax.

Imagine the silent, helpless pain involved when someone tries to peel you free, especially when you can't move or scream. Now you no longer have to imagine. In fact, the gore tactics employed in HOUSE OF WAX are a notch above the rest.

They certainly will make you dread super glue in a whole new way. The ideas don't peter out by the climax either. The fight for life in a melting house of wax (where the house is actually made entirely of wax) is as stupendous as it is outlandish.

All sorts of nightmare images drip before our eyes including the one where you try to run up a staircase and your feet sink into the steps. (A brief, but well deserved mention should be made of production designer Graham "Grace" Walker and set decorator Beverly Dunn. Their realization of the wax rooms raises hairs all on their own.

) None of this would work if the performances weren't strong. Thankfully the ones that count most, that of Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray as estranged brother and sister fighting to survive, are strong indeed. Even Paris Hilton does what she's supposed to: die splendidly while running around half naked.

Believe me, I'd love to rip on Paris here, but she obviously signed on HOUSE OF WAX for fun and fun is what she gives us. Unfortunately her character's story points (and I use the term loosely) are totally beside the point. The meat of HOUSE OF WAX lies with the mirror sets of twins mentioned before.

If screenwriters Chad Carey Hayes didn't have to waste time with extraneous characters, they could have treated us to more of the pathological history of the twin killers. There is something truly demented there and all we get are glimpses. Kids being skewered for having sex, while fun on a simple level, is just plain boring now.

It also doesn't help that these kids are exceedingly dumb. It's one thing to split up when you shouldn't or go into dark places without a flashlight. It's another when, after discovering a home operating theater complete with stained straps and rusty Marquis De Sade instruments, you don't get the hell out of Dodge.

Even the kids from CHAINSAW knew to hightail it once they saw the couch made of human bones. The kids of HOUSE OF WAX, excluding Cuthbert and Murray (even if they do have their brain lapses), are just too stupid to live. Flaws like these (and logistical questions like "A house of wax?

In steamy Baton Rouge, Louisiana?") bog HOUSE OF WAX down from the get go. Fortunately, the talents responsible keep the film from a complete melt down.

The movie opens today in the U.S. and on May 27 in the UK.

You can view further details and media in our database. Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: Powered by FeedBurner It's rare these days when a film actually gets better in the second act, especially if that film is of the horror variety.