The Collector (2009)
Directed by Marcus Dunstan
Written Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton
Starring Josh Stewart, Andrea Roth, Michael Reilly Burke, Juan Fernandez
Release Date July 31st, 2009
Published July 30th 2009
It's a really clever premise. A thief breaks into the home of a wealthy family only to find the family has been taken hostage by a savage serial killer. The thief must either find a way to save his own backside or become a hero and try to save the family. The idea is fraught with moral and physical complications. Sadly, the creators of The Collector suffer a lack of confidence in their premise and the result is a dull series of ghastly set pieces so overly complex Wile E. Coyote would call B******t.
Josh Stewart stars in The Collector as Arkin, a day laborer who uses his job as a way of casing homes for his real vocation as a thief. This job has advantages, he's in charge of a lot of the home security, window bars, door locks and such. With the family supposedly heading out of town the safe Arkin discovered behind a mirror should be easy pickins.
Unfortunately, when Arkin returns and breaks in he finds someone has beat him to the house. The family is still home and they are not alone. A serial killer, known as 'The Collector' for his preference to take one of his victims as a souvenir, has taken mom and dad hostage and worse yet for Arkin, he has elaborately booby trapped the house in case they try to escape.
Will Arkin bolt with his ill gotten booty or try to rescue the family? Well, there wouldn't be much of a movie if he just bolted. Arkin, a family man himself with a daughter the same age as this family's youngest, decides he must act, and a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins.
Well, that is what should begin anyway. The movie The Collector set out to be a movie in which a clever thief and a murderous serial killer match wits. Sadly, the finished product becomes merely a series of dull witted, gory set pieces that sacrifice credulity in favor of the display of viscera.
Instead of having our hero be clever and resourceful, using his unique knowledge of the home against the serial killer, we get an overmatched hero and a remarkably well prepared killer who has, in just a few hours, rigged such elaborate modes of death throughout the house that Rube Goldberg would be horrified and yet appreciate the homage.
Look, I know movies such as this do not thrive on whether you believe what you see, but there is a limit to the suspension of disbelief and the traps created by The Collector, including a head chopping blade on a ceiling fan, a chandelier covered in knives, and a number of sophisticated rope and pulley systems to set off his traps, would take several teams several days to rig. We are to believe he did it in one night, some of them as Arkin is sneaking in the house as they seem to pop up just in time for him to nearly set them off.
The movie is riddled with tiny compromising details such as Arkin's encounter with a dog outside the home. He was at the home for days and never saw a dog and suddenly one is chained up on the lawn hours after the family was supposed to have left for vacation? And he doesn't find this odd?
With the break in, instead of rigging himself an entrance while he was working earlier in the day he merely jimmies the lock. Curious because he was well aware of a security system that armed each time someone opened the door. When that alarm doesn't go off when the door opens this time, is Arkin surprised? No. Is he the single dumbest thief in history? Apparently, or maybe the least observant.
Logic be damned, the makers of The Collector do not care if their characters are idiots or that their clever premise has become an idiot plot. The Collector is all about the gore and the many inventive and grandiose ways human beings can be disposed of. Bear traps, nails, scissors, tripwire, saw blades and gasoline are just some of the tools of the trade for The Collector.
Oh and the film is not at all above the hoary cliches. Whether it's the too loud cat that screams like no cat has ever screamed or the spiking music soundtrack that does the work the director and screenwriter can't in letting the audience know when they should be afraid.
The old horror movie stand by; the dumb cop, shows up for his requisite grisly demise. And the film throws in the hoariest of all cliches, the child in danger plot. That's the one where a tow headed child is placed in harms way to create the tension the story could not create any other way than by manipulating our innate sympathy for children. It's a cheat for hack screenwriters throughout the horror genre.
What a terrible disappointment. The premise of The Collector had so much promise and with Marcus Dunston behind the camera I had really high hopes. Dunston cut his teeth on the last two Saw movies, a pair of disturbing, creepy yet clever and ingenious horror movies that have so unbelievably well maintained horror's finest feature series.
The Saw movies are everything The Collector wishes it were. They're creepy, gory, atmospheric and brainy. Saw has a philosophical basis that gives the gore a context that deepens the experience even as it maintains the visceral, physical scares that people love about horror movies.
As disgusting as the Saw movies can be they proceed from a place of severe story logic. No death happens without a purpose and a price. There is dark reasoning behind each twist and gory turn in Saw. The Collector has no logical base and tries to cover that fact with blood and guts.
It doesn't work. In the end The Collector is another horror movie pretender. Another mindless explication of unnecessary gore and torturous attempts at creating a new horror franchise. The end of the movie is such an astonishing compromise to the commercial concern of sequel making that even those who work hard to like horror movies will be left incredulous.
Collect your money and see any other movie than The Collector.
