Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘Waxwork’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

​Growing up I had the unpleasant opportunity to visit a wax museum and quite frankly, what a creepy place. Empty faces, lifeless eyes and what appeared to be frozen flesh made every moment of walking through the place unnerving. Being young, my imagination went wild, wondering if these ugly little things would come to life at night, and I thank the stars they didn't while I was there. 

I know that I'm not the only one that had such thoughts visiting a place like that, like most children I wondered what else came to life at night and thankfully for all of us, there are films to fulfill our daydreams of yesteryear. Case in point, one horror film decided to answer the question as to what would happen if the inhabitants of a wax museum came to life, in Waxwork. 

There is a new Wax Museum in town, one unlike any others. Its displays are incredibly lifelike, and the faces frozen behind the wax seem to be locked in a moment of utter terror and six college students that visit the museum quickly learn why. Each display is a gateway to another world, one that lives and breathes the setup of the display. The living dead, vampires and werewolves all live here and the sheer existence of this place and these strange worlds is all part of a master plan, because if the curator of this museum can feed enough souls to his starving displays, then the stuff of our nightmares can come to life and find a home in our world at last.

If Waxwork needs one solid word to describe it, that word has to be, homage. Because all of your horror favorites appear in this bad boy. I already mentioned a few in the synopsis, but there are more to be found. Jack the Ripper, mummies, mutants and aliens, the list goes on and on. Which means that this movie should be buckets upon buckets of awesome, but alas... it truly is a B movie through and through. There are a couple of solid names in the film, the legendary David Warner and Zach Galligan from Gremlins anchor the cast, but the rest of the movie leaves something to be desired. There's quite a bit of cheesy special effects for starters, making the scares turn to laughs in quick fashion.   

But the movie is a unique concept, it just... isn't scary. There is little connection to the characters to give you any reason to care about these kids and while the idea of having all this evil take over the world raises the stakes, there's a lot of comedy and camp in this movie to bring the terror to a screeching halt. It's worth a look for horror fans who would like to see some legends we've yet to see on screen come to life, but make sure you watch it with zero expectations because this one is just okay.  

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