Horror from director Robert Zemeckis. What begins as a weekend getaway for six friends becomes a terrifying fight for their lives. A road trip to one of the biggest college football games of the year takes a turn for the worse for Carly (Elisha Cuthbert), Paige (Paris Hilton) and their friends when they decide to camp out for the night before heading to the game. A confrontation with a mysterious trucker at the camp site leaves everyone unsettled, and Carly has her hands full trying to keep the peace between her boyfriend Wade (Jared Padalecki) and her hot-headed brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray). They wake up the next morning to find that their car might have been deliberately tampered with. At the risk of being stranded, they accept a local's invitation for a ride into Ambrose, the only town for miles. Once there, they are drawn to Ambrose's main attraction - Trudy's House of Wax, which is filled with remarkably life-like wax sculptures. But as they soon discover, there is a shocking reason the exhibits look so real. As the friends uncover the town's dark secrets, they are stalked by a mysterious killer and find themselves in a bloody battle for survival. The group must find a way out of Ambrose - or become permanent additions to the House Of Wax. AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW
You know the one about the group of horny kids who get offed one by one? Yeah, so do director Jaume Collet-Serra and his screenwriters, who have updated an old Vincent Price flick and sandwiched it between hearty slices of The Blair Witch Project and various Friday the 13th films. Lots of WB and Fox network hotties--including 24's Elisha Cuthbert, One Tree Hill's Chad Michael Murray, and, well, Paris Hilton--have car trouble and stumble onto a town populated by real killer personalities. The R-rated result is fairly gruesome and, though no one ever quite looks frightened enough, Collet-Serra knows his way around a jolting suspense sequence or two. Cuthbert and an unintentionally funny Murray (striking ludicrous poses as some kind of real toughie) act more like angry ex-lovers than the fraternal twins they're supposed to be; Hilton acts bored while her real-life video scandal is exploited for ironic kicks; and the film heads shamelessly over-the-top with each new twist. As an exercise in bloody mayhem, it has a few novel touches, but you can easily find better scares. --Steve Wiecking,