Yes, I have just seen HOUSE OF WAX for the first time

“Wake up, Wade! I heard something!”

“It’s probably a serial killer…or something.”

Twenty-one years later, I finally watched 2005’s House of Wax, thanks to the film’s arrival on horror streaming service Shudder. What I expected to be something to fall asleep to instead kept me glued to my TV for the entire runtime—and then some, as I poured over the film’s IMDb and Wikipedia pages afterward.

I’m something of a late bloomer when it comes to horror, which is ironic considering I grew up in what is effectively one of the last great, authentic generations of the genre. In the early 2000s, during the horror remake boom kicked off by the big, bloody The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) from Marcus Nispel, I missed most of what would later be dubbed the “slashics” of that era. I caught a few—like Alexandre Aja’s incredibly nasty The Hills Have Eyes—but at the time, my interests leaned more toward action, anime, and comic book movies. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve started working my way through the horror films of the 2000s into the early 2010s.

That brings me to Jaume Collet-Serra’s engrossing House of Wax, a slasher that famously sold itself on the shock value of Paris Hilton (the 2000s it-girl) being killed in brutal fashion. The marketing leaned all the way in, with the “See Paris Die!” campaign—one Hilton herself, self-aware as always, seemed to enjoy.

House of Wax is a remake in name and loose concept of the 1953 3D Vincent Price film, itself a remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum, which starred original scream queen Fay Wray and was based on Charles S. Belden’s 1932 story “The Wax Works.”

The film features a who’s-who of 2000s talent. Alongside Hilton are Elisha Cuthbert (The Ranch), heartthrob Chad Michael Murray (Sullivan’s Crossing), Brian Van Holt (Cougar Town), Damon Herriman (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Jared Padalecki (Supernatural), Jon Abrahams (Wonder Man), and Robert Ri’chard (Empire).

The story follows a group of young, horny teenagers—played in classic 2000s fashion by actors pushing 30—on their way to a college football game when a detour leaves them stranded. With no better option, they pass through Ambrose, a ghost town with a single attraction: Trudy’s House of Wax, an art deco tourist trap filled with sculptures and recreations where everything—even the building itself—is made of wax. It doesn’t take long for the group to realize the town isn’t deserted…and something far more sinister is at play.

Overseen by prolific producer Joel Silver and genre heavyweight Robert Zemeckis, House of Wax is far more creative than it has any right to be—and as a result, far more entertaining and engrossing. The central concept—humans numbed, coated in wax, and left to die as eerie, lifelike sculptures—is both grotesque and weirdly mesmerizing. The contraption used to “waxify” them is especially horrific.

The production design elevates the film immensely. From the deserted Main Street of Ambrose to the killer’s decaying home, to a fully wax-populated movie theater (cleverly looping Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), every setting adds to the film’s atmosphere. All of it builds to the House of Wax museum itself, which literally melts and collapses during the climax—a sequence that remains a marvel of practical effects and set design even 20 years later.

As the group is picked off one by one, the story narrows to Cuthbert and Murray’s sibling characters facing the Sinclair twins. Along the way, the film hints at themes of nature vs. nurture and sibling dynamics, reinforced by the in-universe presence of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, which plays obsessively in the theater.

There are some genuinely gnarly kills here—even by modern standards—balanced with moments of humor, much of it coming from Murray’s refreshingly genre-aware bad-boy lead.

House of Wax ultimately has its cake and eats it too. It works as a straightforward teen slasher while also feeling, in broad strokes, like a “smarter” reworking of a retro horror concept—one that manages to be unique, creative, and at times genuinely inspired.

It doesn’t hurt that the soundtrack is a perfect snapshot of the early 2000s, packed with needle drops from The Prodigy, My Chemical Romance, Joy Division, Marilyn Manson, Stutterfly, and Disturbed.

House of Wax is streaming now on Shudder—and if not there, you can probably still find it sitting on a dusty DVD rack at a thrift store near you.