Review Summary: Carly Jones: You have to be careful! Nick Jones: I am being careful.
Anyone who considers themselves a true fan of horror (specifically, the "slasher" subgenre) can see that 2005's
House of Wax, like most of its contemporaries in the 00's remake orgy, has begun to fade into obscurity (along with Chad Michael Murray's career prospects and Paris Hilton's sex symbol status). The film is a re-imagination of the 1953 Vincent Price classic bearing the same name. It was a modest box office disappointment, failing to domestically re-capture its production budget (roughly 40 million dollars). Sure, there have been worse entries (
Black X-mas, Prom Night), but then there have also been much better (Alejandre Aja's
The Hills Have Eyes, Rob Zombie's re-imagined
Halloween).
What will go down in history, however, is the film's wicked,
WICKED awesome soundtrack. Boasting entries from
My Chemical Romance,
Deftones, and
the Stooges, Warner Music Group has truly crafted a wondrous compilation of songs-- one that is more than capable of returning us to the film's gratuitous violence and geriatric plot progression.
Just as they did years earlier with 2001's
Valentine, WMG delivers exactly what anyone could ask for in a soundtrack: f*cking tits-awesome album art. The color scheme of the album's artwork is really super tits, and the design with the wax cascading down a green woman's naked body? TITS! It just looks so super cool. I actually keep duplicate files in my iTunes so that I can come across the album art more often via coverflow.
Another thing I like about this album is that
My Chemical Romance is on it. A lot of people label MCR as 'emo,' but in reality, they're just a couple of theatrical dudes from New Jersey.
Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge seems to have been recorded specifically to accompany a slasher. "I Never Told You What I Do for a Living" sounds literally like it was written for this movie. Actually, the song is really what the movie should have been. I bet if someone wrote a script based on the song's lyrics, and got a couple of WB stars to read it while looking sexy and making bad decisions, the result would be better than this film. (I'm actually pretty sure this already happened (sans WB stars and sexiness)... the outcome was
Mr. Brooks, which woulda been much better if (a) less Dane and (b) more noodz)...
...but I digress.
Marilyn Manson's brand of industrial, theatre-metal, a staple on these types of soundtracks, tends to elicit similar themes. "Dried Up, Tied and Dead to the World" is slow, danceable, and oddly tame (for Manson). Remember: you're allowed to like this; we're talking about
Antichrist Superstar -era Manson, so it's from before it was cool to hate on him.
Disturbed's "Prayer" also makes an appearance, an odd choice considering all those other
Disturbed songs championing muted mumbling and beautifully incomprehensible repetition (works for these lazy remakes on so many levels). If they adapted the average
Disturbed song into a film I'm pretty sure it would turn out something like
Juno meets
Nightmare 3: Dream Warriors (the one with Patricia Arquette and Lawrence Fishburne). It would be much more palatable than Juno (probably the most fruity, artsy, indie slasher of all time).
Bloodsimple (yeah that's actually their name) is an ok fit on here as well. "Path to Prevail" is a pretty nice, light-hearted, love song about how much of a badass Chad Michael Murray probably is in real life, cuz you really can't fake that kind of performance. You really believe his character did some 'time' and that he 'doesn't play by the rules.'
Prodigy's "Spitfire," is just like "Path to Prevail" except that it sounds completely different and doesn't suck ass.
Moving onto "Minerva," the
Deftones contribution, here's a song that I always thought was sort of a letdown, just because I hold the band to such high standards. Sure, the song is Chino in ambient/epic mode, which is always worth your time, but for some reason it never clicked with me. I remember when the song first came out, I recorded off the radio on a tape, and was a little bummed. Fortunately, the album ended up being pretty great. I'm not going to bother relating it to the film, though.
Stutterfly's "Gun in Hand" sounds a bit like it should have been released by
Pierce the Veil of some other Equal Vision band, years later, and on a much better CD than anything Stutterfly every put out. Perhaps that is just the album's motif. The soundtrack closes with
Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades" and
Dark New Day's "Taking Me Alive," both solid tracks in their own right.
I think, bottom line, whoever was in charge of picking the songs from whatever label-affiliated song bank did a pretty good job. Just as good a job as the casting director who plucked young faces from WB network-affiliated teen dramas. Overall, the album is pretty progressive. I'd give it a shot if I were you.
