Set me down at the end of the bar where no one but the saggy
old woman tending can see us, put down a bottle and wait a couple hours, and I
might tell you how much I actually, truly enjoy House of Wax. The remake.
The one that was part of the nascent torture porn wave. The one I tried to deny
for so long and that, for all intents and purposes, is a towering pile of
trash.
So when I read that with the film Orphan Joel Silver and Dark Castle are putting
faith once more in Wax director Jaume Collet-Serra, I get a little twinge. Maybe
excitement. Maybe fear for the
structural integrity of paraffin houses. Maybe realization that this is the director
who finally put Rutger Hauer in a soccer movie.
Add Peter Saarsgaard and Vera Farmiga to the mix, as a couple
who lose their baby and adopt a 9-year old girl who might have some secrets…well,
shit.
Now, there’s a catch. Farmiga’s already been in one crazy
kid movie, Joshua, which hated guinea pigs. (I wish I had another ten
of the stuffed toys that were the film’s promo swag.) She was remarkable as the increasingly distressed mom. But really, another role as a mother of a crazy
kid? Dual hot Boston shrink turns I could see, but how many mothers of crazy
infants could there really be? Oh.
Script is by David Leslie Johnson (he who once wrote a Doc
Savage script with Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell) based on a story by Alex
Mace, who, if I’m not mistaken, was actually a Doc Savage character written
specifically into editions published for readers in Peristalsis,
Arkansas. The film starts rolling next week in Toronto and Montreal.