Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Other

That I guessed the twist within the first fifteen minutes does not diminish the successes of the film. The Other is about a young boy and his twin whose idyllic lives in a small town are ripped apart by a series of mysterious deaths.

Legendary director Robert Mulligan took on this rather interesting thriller that does masterful work keeping the mystery preserved until just the right moment and then dug in for a fantastic final act. Young thespians Chris & Martin Udvarnoky do strong job with Niles and Holland Perry while Uta Hagen is marvelous as the guiding aunt Ada. Diana Muldaur also does well as Niles and Holland’s despondent mother.

House of Wax

I like horror films like a lot of people, but there is only so far in my appreciation I can go when faced with something this abysmally put together.

The story revolves around 6 college students on a road trip who end up trapped in a deserted town where every person is a wax mannequin. The set-up is superficial, the interpersonal dynamics between characters are thinly constructed and the deaths are largely unoriginal. We don’t typically care about performance in these kinds of horror films, but Paris Hilton probably gives the worst such performance in horror history. She dies in the first scene of the film, long before she’s actually slaughtered.

The film has little resemblance to the Vincent Price classic, so don’t go in expecting a remake of that film.