I finally (thanks, Netflix) got around to seeing the 2005 version of “House of Wax” … which is a remake of 1953’s “House of Wax” which is a remake of 1933’s “Mystery of the Wax Museum.”

Now, I am not going say it was good but it was better than I expected it to be. I was expecting a really, really, really bad movie.

The plot is like 2,000 other horror films you have seen. Party-hardy teens stumble their way into a seemingly deserted only to be sliced, diced and covered in wax to be put on display in the titular House of Wax. What really amazed me was the total and utter dumbness of our leads as they encounter one sinister event after another in the lead up to murder and mayhem. Would you ignore a) creepy truck b) a dead animal dumping ground c) unpaved backwoods roads d) towns not listed on any map and the fact that the town looks like it belongs in the 1950’s.

The production design is really about all that “House of Wax” has going for it. The town of Ambrose is the coolest thing in the movie … especially the fact that the House of Wax is indeed entirely made of wax. This set piece could have offered us some really cool scary moments ala “Tourist Trap.” I mean, c’mon, who isn’t scared of mannequins and wax figures? Instead the screenwriter goes the easy route and offers us the standard stalk/chase scenarios that we’ve been seeing since “Black Christmas” gave birth to the modern slasher film.

Zzzzzzzzz.

One a good note though … I will say that Paris Hilton does get one spectacular death scene. At least (at that moment) the filmmakers knew what we wanted to see.