The film opens in year 1974, with a family of a wax sculpture maker seemingly having a
normal breakfast. Not long after, the father enters the room carrying their second child,
who is fighting with all his might to escape his grip.
The parents, who we now learn are very abusive, proceed to violently tie the child to a chair.
We then skip to present day, to a bunch of young adults who are about to leave for their road trip
to watch a sports game. There is Carly the feisty one, Paige the promiscuous friend,
Wade the protective boyfriend, Nick who is Carly’s badboy twin, Blake the token black
friend who is dating Paige, and Dalton the sleaze ball who likes to film his friends.
The group of friends pile into two different cars, and set off on their way.
A few hours later, Paige suggests that they should pull over somewhere for the night and take a rest.
They pick a secluded spot in the middle of the woods to set up camp.
Not long after, a gush of wind blows in their direction,
and the group begin smelling a foul stench coming from the woods.
They decide to dismiss it for now, and proceed to have fun by their bonfire.
Until this happens :
The truck’s arrival put their celebration to a halt and the
group proceed to ask the driver to exit the car, but the driver doesn’t react.
Even after Nick throws the bottle, the driver still refuses to come out. And then
after a few moments, the truck drives away. Later that night when the group is asleep,
an unseen figure takes Dalton’s camera and begins filming them.
The subtle noises wakes up Carly, who immediately goes to investigate.
However, she finds nothing. In the morning, Dalton can’t seem
to find his camera. The group ignores him and proceed to get ready to resume their journey,
right when they realize that Wade’s car won’t start because its fan belt has been tampered with.
While the boys remain at camp, Carly and Paige are in the woods. The wind blows again,
followed with the foul stench. Curious, Carly decides to investigate. But then…
Apparently, the foul stench is coming from a ditch full of rotting road kills.
Even worse, Carly sees someone’s hand sticking out.
She screams in fear while the boys rush into the woods to help her.
Once Carly makes it back to safety, a truck arrives and pulls up across from them.
The driver proceeds to carelessly dump more animal remains into the ditch,
until Wade calls him out about the hand sticking out, so he starts walking up towards it.
Wade asks the guy about the nearest gas station to buy a new fan belt. The guy
then offers to take Wade there, and Carly who is his girlfriend naturally wants to tag along.
However, the rest of the group don’t want to miss out on the game,
so they opt to leave the two in the hands of the sketchy guy.
The group split up, and we follow Carly and Wade as they get driven
to a nearby town called Ambrose. But at some point, Wade and Carly grow suspicious.
The weird guy announces that they only need to drive a little further,
but Carly and Wade who are already creeped out by him insist on walking from this point on.
While this is happening, the rest of the group find themselves stuck in heavy traffic
and realize that they’ll never make it to the game in time. Hence, they decide to turn back.
Back to Wade and Carly, they’re walking along the main road of the eerily quiet town of Ambrose.
At some point, Carly gets a call from Paige who informs her that the rest of the group
are heading back to their campsite. The couple make it to the gas station but find
no one there so they decide to walk further,
until they come across the town’s church.
As they open the doors, they find a funeral service there.
Not long after, a man exits the church and we learn that he just so happens to be town’s gas
station owner. His name is Bo and he tells Wade and Carly to wait at the gas station
while he finishes up at the church as they are holding the funeral of someone dear to him.
To pass time, the couple decide to visit the town’s House of Wax.
They enter anyway despite a sign saying it’s closed.
The two then begin exploring and seem to be in awe of the fact that literally
everything around them is made out of wax, including the walls of the building.
But then...
Carly starts freaking out, but Wade dismisses her fears and assures her there’s nothing to be
afraid of. While Wade goes outside to look for the figure, Carly decides to explore the other rooms.
Because Carly is freaking out, they decide to head straight to the gas station.
On the other side of the story, the rest of the group have made it back to camp. Blake who wants
some time alone with his girlfriend asks Nick and Dalton to take the car and pick up Carly and Wade.
Back to Carly and Wade, they make it to the gas station. However, Wade is unable to find what
he is looking for. As if on cue, Bo walks in and informs them that he stores the exact fan
belt Wade is looking for in his house. Hearing this, Wade and Carly have no choice but to go
with him to his house to get the fan belt. On the way there, Bo decides to tell them
a story about the town’s House of Wax that as it turns out used to be a family’s business.
The main artist was Trudy, and her son Vincent followed in her footsteps.
Trudy’s husband, Doc Sinclair, used to be a doctor in the big city until he got his license revoked
for performing an illegal procedure, so the entire family moved to this small town to start anew
and opened up this wax museum. Trudy then died from brain cancer and her husband who couldn’t
cope with it decided to kill himself. Plus, they had two sons who ended up in foster homes.
Once they arrive, Wade asks for permission to use the bathroom
while Carly decides to wait inside Bo’s truck as he offered to give them a lift back.
After using the bathroom, Wade decides to explore a strange room inside the house
that is filled with strange things, including a medical license of a man named Victor Sinclair.
Meanwhile outside, Carly decides to step out of the truck. As she looks around, she
realizes something: one of the truck’s headlights is broken, meaning this is the truck that she and
her friends saw last night. Realizing they’re unsafe, she rushes to honk the truck’s horn.
All of the sudden, the lights inside the house go out, and the door shuts
behind Wade.
It is at this point that a mysterious figure appears,
ands slices his heel with a pair of scissors, before pinning him down and knocking him out.
Carly who is panicking outside tries calling Paige for help but her call goes unanswered.
She then rushes inside the truck and locks herself inside, which angers Bo.
Realizing his cover is blown, Bo breaks his way in and tries pulling her out by force.
Luckily, Carly is able to fight back by shifting the gear stick.
Carly then tries to drive away but finds the truck stuck. To make things even worse,
she sees Bo stands in front of the truck.
Still not out of ideas, Carly escapes through the back and runs for her life.
While Carly runs, Wade who is barely conscious gets dragged away and laid atop a table. The
wax sculptor whose name is Vincent Sinclair proceeds to inject him with a paralyzing drug,
before stitching him up and prepping him to become his next art piece.
Carly finally makes it back to the main street when all the lights suddenly turn on as if they
are automatically set to do so. She then decides to run inside the church in hopes of getting help
but finds everyone unmoving. Not only that, it turns out that all the noises
in the church are coming from a single audio player placed inside the room.
She then checks out the prayer booklet and we learn that the dead body lying inside is none
other than Trudy Sinclair, aka Vincent Sinclair’s mother. Like every other wax figure in the room,
her body has been meticulously preserved with wax. Carly then hears footsteps approaching the church
and goes hide. Bo enters the room soon after and refers to the dead body in the coffin as his mama.
He begins to search for Carly and almost turns around to leave, but then…
Carly escapes his grip and makes it back outside, but this time he manages to pin her down.
She asks for help but no one comes to her aid.
But there might be hope just yet because Nick and Dalton finally arrive. They step
out of the car because their car couldn’t make it past the rocky path.
Bo takes Carly to the gas station’s basement and ties her to a chair. Carly notices a red
gash around his wrist, signifying to us viewers that Bo was the child tied down
to the chair in the beginning of the film. Bo then gets interrupted when Nick and Dalton
come knocking upstairs. He holds a knife to her throat and threatens her not to say anything.
The two then decide to split up to look for Wade and Carly.
Meanwhile, Bo decides to apply super glue over Carly’s lips to keep her from screaming for help.
When Bo finally leaves, she tries to find a way to break free.
Right below them, Carly who overhears her brother’s voice begins trying to scream for help
while Bo pretends to not know anything. Carly finally breaks away from the chair
and tries sticking her finger through the manhole in hopes that her brother would see it.
However, Bo chops off her finger to keep her quiet.
Bo then offers to help Nick look for his friends,
while Carly struggles to rip the super glue off her lips.
Nick bolts inside the gas station and keeps Bo out before running downstairs
to rescue his twin sister.
On the other side of town,
Dalton makes his way inside the wax museum and finds Wade sitting by the piano.
Dalton tries peeling the wax off him but ends up tearing off his skin instead. Even though Wade
is crying and is obviously in pain, Dalton who apparently is an idiot keeps peeling his skin off.
Then all of the sudden, Vincent sneaks up behind him
and starts chasing him.
Vincent manages to corner him, finishes him off by decapitating him.
Back to Nick and Carly, they realize that Bo finally decided to leave
and rush back upstairs. Nick tries to call the police on the landline but realizes that
no phone will work in this kind of movie. They also can’t get help from the townsfolk because…
But then Carly remembers something:
When Bo captured her, there was an old woman who opened her curtain
but decided to shut it again. The siblings decide to head toward the old woman’s house.
As it turns out, the old woman has been turned to a wax figure too.
Back at the camp, Paige is trying to get some sleep when this happens:
Paige falls to the ground and sees Blake dying with a knife in his throat.
She gets back up and runs into the woods, where she finds a random building and hides inside.
The lights suddenly turn on, and Paige arms herself with a metal bar.
Unfortunately, Vincent notices her whereabouts, so she hides inside a car.
Now that Vincent is caught off guard, she uses the opportunity to try and escape once again,
but this time she isn’t so lucky.
Back in town, Nick decides to break the glass of a hunting goods store to arm himself. However…
They make their way inside the cinema and disguise themselves
as members of the audience while Bo searches for them.
Bo gets shot but still goes after them, and this time the good guys get the upper hand.
After finding no ammo in the shotgun, they make their way back to Bo’s house where Carly last saw
Wade. They then make their way inside and search around. Carly then finds a drawer containing
newspaper articles of a surgeon performing a controversial surgery on siamese twins that we
can only assume were Vincent and Bo.
Somehow, Bo is still alive. He begins to remove the arrows lodged in his body.
Vincent arrives not long after and we learn that his disfigured face is covered in wax. Apparently,
Bo who is manipulative and a bully has been been encouraging Vincent
turn the townsfolk into wax figures to somewhat preserve their family’s legacy.
Meanwhile, Carly and Nick manage to slip past them and make their way into the basement.
Unbeknownst to them, the switches toggle the lights in different parts of town.
Bo and Vincent take notice of this upstairs.
The twins then venture the tunnels, and find themselves
in Vincent’s work station, where they see Dalton.
Unfortunately they’re not left with much time to
process their grief, as Vincent shows up. The twins try to fight him off,
accidentally setting off the gigantic wax-melting stoves in the process.
Nick pours out one pot of wax to keep Vincent from coming after them, and the twins make
their way upstairs to the wax museum, where they once again come face to face with Bo.
Bo is still incredibly strong for some reason, despite the fact that he literally got shot with
arrows not even an hour ago. He fights against Nick until Nick gets stabbed on
the thigh, and then fights Carly, who beats him to death with a baseball bat.
Vincent arrives at the scene, and is livid to find his brother dead. He proceeds to go
after Carly while the wax museum begins to melt, thanks to the burning basement.
Vincent finds Carly, and moves to attack her,
right when Nick arrives and tackles him to the bed.
Vincent manages to pin Nick down, until Carly takes out the knife lodged in her brother’s thigh,
and uses it to stab Vincent.
With their remaining strength,
the twins dig through the wall, and finally make their way outside the melting building .
On the next scene, the once quiet town is bustling with police investigators and EMT personnel.
Nick and Carly are resting inside an ambulance right when the sheriff approaches them.
The police explains to them that the town has been abandoned for the past 10 years but apparently
the brothers have been pulling people off the interstate and turning them into wax figures.
Just as the twins are driven away from the town, the sheriff gets informed that the Sinclair family
didn’t have two sons.
They have three.