Over the past five or six years, the horror genre has been inundated with a spate of what I deem "trap and torture" films; that is, films in which a demented assailant corrals helpless victims, bounds them up and subjects them to the most foul and heinous barrage of physical torment. Flicks like Saw and its sequels, as well as Hostel and it's continuation, are gleaming examples of such. Well now, courtesy of Marcus Dunstan and co-writer Patrick Melton, the lucrative brain children of such populist genre fare as all three Feast films, Saw IV, V, VI and soon to be VII - comes Dunstan's directorial debut The Collector - a hyper-charged, gore sodden piece of flash horror that like its main perpetrator, clocks you over the head with unrelenting lead pipe cruelty.
Once Arkin discovers another perpetrator is present, he uses his criminal aplomb to remain unnoticed. He finds the man of the house, Michael (Michael Relly Burke), bound and gagged, his body cut and slashed up. When Michael sees Arkin, he assumes the handyman is the one behind the maiming. Arkin assures he will help the family escape, even reiterating this when finding Victoria (Andrea Roth), the wife, with a blindfold pinned into her eyelids. Victoria informs Arkin that Hannah (Karley Scott Collins), the litle girl, is hiding in the house somewhere, and Lisa (Madeline Zima), the older daughter, has yet to return home. As a father himself, Arkin's main objective becomes finding the little girl and rescue her from harm.
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The Man (as Juan Fernandez is credited) looks like a psychotic foot-soldier, decked in all black, a Gollum like S&M ski-mask slinked over his head, his eyes shark-black, his lips crustily dehydrated. He almost resembles the gimp from Pulp Fiction, but with much greater vim and vigor. Anyway, this guy's a real piece of work. He's knocked out the lights, boarded up all the windows from the inside (with razor blades planted in the ledges), inserted nails into the phone receiver, laid a nest of bear-traps, stuck large knives in the chandelier, shot hot glue over the floor of one room, set all kinds of wire and pulley traps, piano wire webs, etc. etc. He's essentially tunred the place into a true bloodletting house of horror. So what sets this guy apart from other psycopathic killers? Well, in one of the only expository scenes, Arkin (and we) learns that the guy is a collector of humans, and he doesn't plant to kill anyone save for a last ditch effort or if people whom he does not wish to collect interfere.
What was originally conceived as a Saw prequel, The Collector now doubt carries shades of the aforementioned films. Yet as a trap and torture film, briskly racing at 88 minutes, the movie also has an effective cringe and squirm formula. It’s nasty, grue soaked, unforgiving, and some of the fatalities are, like its perpetrator, pretty inventive. I don’t want to spill all, but one person gets projected into a wall of large nails, with a suspenseful buildup, the result both terrifying and oddly comedic. What’s not formulaic however is a pat-genre conclusion. What could have ended as a typical studio film actually is subverted and becomes something much more lasting in the way it ends. Sure the flick centers on a one-trick premise, but as I’ve often posited, I quite enjoy flicks that take place in one day, in one location, with a small cast of characters. Here such a quality only heightens the level of claustrophobia, we the audience in effect become (perhaps as) trapped as the characters themselves. The acting in the film is fine, with relative unknowns. My only real beef with the flick was that it at times seemed a little too stylized and flashy; the lightening quick editing, in the dark no less, can become a bit cumbersome. But as a first feature effort, that sure is one minimal complaint. All in all I’d say make yourself a ticket Collector and go see the damn film.
Terror Rating: 3 out of 5
Originality: 3.5 out of 5
Level of Gore: 4 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
Recommendations: Pick a Saw film, any Saw film.
