(Cert 15, 112mins) Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Jon Abrahams, Robert Ri'chard, Brian Van Holt, Damon Herriman. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.

Hollywood continues to pillage the vaults with this teen-friendly new version of the cult 1953 horror-thriller starring Vincent Price - the first feature produced by a major studio in 3-D.

Sadly, Jaume Collet-Serra's bloodthirsty take on House Of Wax doesn't require you to don a pair of green and red cardboard spectacles.

So you'll just have to make do with some fantastically gory deaths and Paris Hilton trying to outrun a deformed killer in her skimpiest red lingerie.

The filmmakers certainly know how to appeal to their target audience.

College student Carly (Cuthbert), her boyfriend Wade (Padalecki), best friend Paige (Hilton) and her boyfriend Blake (Ri'chard) are preparing to hit the road to attend one of the biggest football games of the year.

Unfortunately, Carly's hot-headed ex-con brother Nick (Murray) and his knucklehead best friend Dalton (Abrahams) decide to come along, too.

It's a long and arduous drive to the game and when night falls, the bright young things decide to stop for the night and camp in a field close to the roadside.

After a couple of beers and a few harsh words between Nick and Wade, the group experiences a deeply unsettling encounter with a mysterious trucker.

Nick frightens off the trucker by throwing a bottle of beer at one of the headlights. Like us, Carly doesn't think aggression is a very good idea.

The next morning, Wade wakes to find his fan belt is broken.

Accepting a lift from a passing motorist (Herriman), Wade and Carly head into the nearby town of Ambrose in search of a replacement fan belt.

Friendly garage owner Bo (Van Holt) promises to help and while they wait, the young couple heads for the local tourist attraction: Trudy's House of Wax. There they uncover the town's dark secrets.

House Of Wax doesn't have a single intelligent twist in its body. In this day and age, it's almost inconceivable that youngsters in peril would split up with a psychopath on the loose. Yet once again, the pretty protagonists sprint merrily towards their gruesome demise.

Performances are unremarkable - Cuthbert is a feisty yet rather bland heroine and Hilton doesn't embarrass herself too much.

The stars of Collet-Serra's film are the make-up effects (the deaths are deliciously over-the-top) and the production design.

An overblown finale, set within the house of wax, is genuinely spectacular.