"House of Wax" is a slick, attractive, and utterly mindless teen slasher film. It’s about a group of young people that get stranded in the woods near a wax museum, and they are picked off one at a time by mysterious killers.

The film combines elements from previous horror films. It has a murderous dysfunctional family like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," a mysterious masked killer like "Halloween," and a teen protagonist who likes to shoot the woods on his camera like" The Blair Witch Project."

There are some effective gore effects and fantastic sets, but the script is completely mediocre. "House of Wax" also lacks well developed characters or memorable lines of dialog. It is in the tradition of recent remakes like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "Dawn of the Dead," which update horror classics by simplifying the stories and adding fresh faces along with tons of gore. The only difference is that even the original 3-D "House of Wax" film was fairly mediocre.

The paper thin characters in "House of Wax" include a sensible but scantily clad "good girl," Carly ("The Girl Next Door’s" Elisha Cuthbert), and her snobby, sexually adventurous friend, Paige ("A Simple Life’s" Paris Hilton, who seems to be playing herself.)

The two main male characters also seem to be opposites. Wade (Jared Padelecki) is Carly’s sensitive, restrained boyfriend, and Nick (Chad Michael Murray) is her bad boy twin brother who always gets in trouble with the law. Of course, Nick sees Wade as a wimp, and he constantly needles him. Then there’s a geeky Hollywood wanna be filmmaker and his brutish friend.

The whole group goes on a road trip to see a football game, but one of the vehicles breaks down. The group decides to camp near a wax museum, and they foolishly split up. Nick and Carly go off to find a fan belt, and they gradually begin to find out dark secrets of the nearby town.

Since this is a slasher film, there are plenty of tracking shots from the point of view of the killers, and all the teens always make the worst possible choices at every juncture in the film.

When the girls smell the nauseating aroma of rotting flesh, they immediately decide to walk towards it, and of course one of them falls in the pile. Since the film lacks the self reflexive wit of "Scream," most of the characters come off as thick and non-thinking.

The film does have one unforgettable scene. Many members of the audience eagerly awaited something horrible to happen to Paris Hilton’s character, and when her comeuppance came, they applauded loudly. Her delightful ultimate fate is the highlight of the film.

"House of Wax" also has a spectacular battle scene that takes place in a melting wax house. Some chills and thrills might get you but this is not a clever or ground breaking horror film, and it is not worth a full admission price.