The Collector Review

There’s a masked man on the loose, a spate of grisly murders and someone’s left a dry ice machine on in the woods: it must be a horror film!

The Collector is a gory caper set in near real time, in which a handyman breaks into a house he has been maintaining in order to steal a precious stone to pay off his wife’s debts. The Collector is also the alias of the Comic Book Guy in a Tree House of Horror episode of The Simpsons, but that’s by the by. Saw alumnus Marcus Dunstan directs the script he co-wrote with Patrick Melton.

The aforementioned thief, Arkin (played by Josh Stewart) befriends the family he will soon be burglarising during the day, bonding in particular with the teenage Jill (Madeline Zima) and little cherub Hannah (Karley Scott Collins), whom he will soon find himself defending from the masked and silent maniac that turns their home into a death trap, rigging numerous contraptions of doom like Kevin from Home Alone gone psychotic.

There is plenty to dislike about the film. For one thing, it is needlessly and intrusively loud. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but is there really any need to crank the volume so very high? The opening titles are rather smirk-inducing, looking like a hyperactive media studies pupil’s interpretation of a Nine Inch Nails video. The film is also incredibly mean-spirited, nasty and has a creepy, voyeuristic view of violence. To be frank, I thought the film was awful, though I am all too aware that this isn’t the type of film I would ever watch voluntarily. I simply don’t see the enjoyment in watching horrible things happen to undeserving people.

In spite of this, I did recognise some features worthy of merit. Firstly, I enjoyed the real time aspect of the film, which served to keep pace and tension ticking away nicely. The direction was not unimpressive, though was perhaps a little scattershot. Some sequences looked as though they belonged in music videos, other earlier sequences had an oversaturated, seventies style aesthetic, and much of the rest suited the horror genre they found themselves in. It all looked quite good, but a little more thematic consistency would have been nice. Jerome Dillon’s score was also fine and well implemented in the film.

Particularly effective was Arkin’s initial break in and his discovery that he is not alone in the house. In fact, much of the early part of the movie was very good; highly fraught with tension and actually rather scary. It is only when the blood-letting begins in earnest that the film starts to fall down and becomes a tedious celebration of gore. That said it is still far better than the bag of balls that was last month’s Nightmare on Elm Street reboot.

The Collector then, is a promising beginning severely let down by an unpleasant and adolescent fascination with violence. This wouldn’t be so bad if there were any kind of explanation as to the antagonist’s motivations but this is left totally unanswered. He’s just a nasty dude he turns up and starts being incomprehensibly violent to some unfortunate innocents and we’re never shown why. Grudgingly, however, I will accept that if you are an aficionado of the banal torture-porn genre, this is probably a decent example which you will no doubt enjoy. You sicko.

http://www.blogomatic3000.com/2010/06/08/review-the-collector/