“House of Wax” (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2005)
For a while, Joel Silver’s Dark House production shingle, set up at Warner Bros and specializing in down-and-dirty genre fare, almost exclusively remade old horror movies, with most coming from the back catalog of William Castle, a gimmicky, cigar-chomping producer who considered himself in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock but was more along the lines of P.T. Barnum. The results were often well-intentioned misfires (“House on Haunted Hill” was too arch, “Thirteen Ghosts” tonally and editorially uneven), but they struck gold with their remake of the 1953 Vincent Price shocker “House of Wax,” this time by then-unknown Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (in the years since he’s become one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood). Sadly, most of the remake’s notoriety comes from the stunt casting of Paris Hilton in a pivotal role; it should surprise no one that the movie becomes significantly better once she is unceremoniously killed off. The “House of Wax” remake is impeccably crafted, combining direct references to the 1953 original while incorporating more modern influences, including the work of Tobe Hooper (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” to be sure, but also flourishes of “Eaten Alive” and “The Funhouse”). While some may feel the film’s pacing is a little too deliberate, the last act of “House of Wax,” in particular, gallops along; it’s breathlessly exciting filmmaking that you can’t help but goggle at, and feels like the only remaining evidence of original Dark House principle Robert Zemeckis’ tangential involvement. It’s that damn good.
“Halloween”/”Halloween II” (Rob Zombie, 2007 and 2009)
Initially, Rob Zombie‘s skewered, hyper-detailed approach to the mythos of John Carpenter‘s 1977 classic (the gold standard by which all other slashers are compared against), an approach critic Nathan Lee rightfully described as not “so much a horror film as a biopic, and a superb one at that,” was either completely dismissed or outright ignored. It was long on the tortured childhood of young soon-to-be-serial killer Michael Myers and short on the blood-splattered mayhem, with Zombie essentially getting down to the business of remaking the original in a truncated, overtly hectic third act which felt less like an organic conclusion than something that the studio tried to aggressively force on him. The fact that Zombie came back to helm a sequel, mostly in order to get away from what he considered to be a constrictive contract with The Weinstein Company, is something of a shock. The fact that he made a movie even uglier (shot in ragged 16 mm and blown up to 35 mm for theatrical exhibition) and more divisive than his first film is nothing short of miraculous. Taken together, though, as some online have suggested is the only true way to “watch” the movies, and it’s like the “Kill Bill” of horror remakes – an expansive, utterly personal epic that, for scope and adventurousness, trumps nearly every horror movie, remake or otherwise, from the past decade. (It should be noted, for the sake of honesty, that when reviewing the sequel for this very website, yours truly called the sequel “baffling and half-baked.”) The whole bloody “Halloween” affair is psychologically adroit and unpredictably nimble, weaving between “prequel” and “remake” and showcasing what went into Michael Myers’ transformation into the homicidal maniac we know and love today, which then gives way to a more impressionistic (but just as grubby) examination of the same evil. It might not be perfect but it’s incredibly personal – the interpretive work of a singular artist deathly afraid of the same old shit.
