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| Release: 2012, Rating: R, Run time: 82 min. |
Okay, so here’s the deal. My review of The Collector mentioned that the gore was the main selling feature and the story took a back seat, practically a back seat in an entirely different car. Now, the sequel, The Collection, decides to ramp up the gore by 20X and offer a pretty good story, albeit one that we’ve seen before. With that said, it’s fairly obvious that The Collection comes out on top as being much better than The Collector, a movie I enjoyed. So, even though I think you can see where this review is going, why don’t we read on…
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: A man who escapes from the vicious grips of the serial killer known as
“The Collector” is blackmailed to rescue an innocent girl from the
killer’s booby-trapped warehouse.
The Collection starts off with a giant bang. The gore is flying, the kills are amazing and my jaw is hitting the floor so damn fast. There is no way in hell I’m spoiling that opening scene, so let’s skip that part and let me give you the general gist of what the movie is about.
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| The Collector (Randall Archer) surveying his next victim. |
Rich girl, Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), get’s kidnapped by The Collector and our unlikely hero from the first one, Arkin (Josh Stewart), is to the rescue, with a band of mercenaries. The mercs, along with their leader, Lucello
(Lee Tergesen), who has close ties to Elena, want Arkin to show them where The Collector is hiding. So, he leads the way and from there, we get to see exactly what The Collector does on his own spare time and what he really does with all those people he collects.
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| One of The Collector’s many “art” displays. |
The Collection’s back story, is basically a mix of Aliens (mercs on a mission), Saw 2/3 (trapped in a maze, various traps) and finally, the first Saw video game. So, yeah originality is not The Collection’s strong suit, but screw it, I enjoyed the shit out of it anyway. Why you may be asking? Well, for one thing, the gore has been ratcheted up to an obscene level and I’m loving every minute of it. Plus, the movie is not once boring and never slows down for one minute. Finally, the ending is awesome! It ended exactly how I wanted it to and I was smiling ear to ear. I really hope we get another sequel, that’s all I can say. However, it should be mentioned, that most of these positives (more gore, better story) are probably due to The Collection having a much high budget of $10,000,00, which was $4,000,000 more than the first movie.
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| Arkin (Josh Stewart) facing off against The Collector. |
So, is anything bad? Sadly, The Collector himself is still not expanded upon, but he does come off as quite the crazy son of a bitch. We also have the problem of having none of the other characters be expanded upon either. Yeah, the story is fun and never lets up, but jeeze, you think at least some character development could’ve been afforded. Maybe they were worried it would take away from the gore scenes. Either way, they definitely could’ve spent some time giving us even a little bit of information.
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| Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) regretting her decision on a night out with friends. |
The Collection has stepped even more into the shadow of the Saw series, even getting the same composer, Charlie Clouser, who replaces Jerome Dillon. Is this a bad thing? In my opinion, not really. These two series can exist in the same universe and they still manage to get along just fine (shocking, I know). With that said, The Collection is one sequel that suppresses the original, in both gore, story and all around fun.
Rating:
