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| Release: 2009, Rating: R, Run time: 90 min. |
Whether or not you like The Collector, will come down to this little tidbit of useless information. The Collector was originally penned as a prequel to the Saw series. So, expect tons of gore, elaborate traps and a shit ton of the colour green. If you happened to like the Saw series, which I absolutely do, then you’ll be pretty pleased with The Collector. So, let’s setup some traps together, by reading on…
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: Desperate to repay his debt to his ex-wife, an ex-con plots a heist at
his new employer’s country home, unaware that a second criminal has also
targeted the property, and rigged it with a series of deadly traps.
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| The Collector (Juan Fernandez) is one creepy looking bastard. |
The Collector is light on story, I can tell you that much. It follows Arkin (Josh Stewart), a down on his luck laborer, who needs money to help his ex-wife pay off some loan sharks. So, he cases the house he is working on and plans on robbing it during the night, stealing a precious ruby in the husbands safe. Things are going to plan, until a masked man shows up. Arkin then finds out that the house is rigged with dozens of traps and the family is being tortured and the mask man is known as The Collector. Cue tons of gore and some boobies!
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| Jill Chase (Madeline Zima) is only several scenes away from showing her boobs. God bless her. |
The biggest thing going for The Collector, is the freaking gore, which is just fantastic. This movie vows to beat Saw in the kill department and for the most part, it succeeds fairly well. Elaborate traps are flying people through the air into a bed of nails, bear traps are doing some nasty business to a poor fellow and you can’t forget one scene involving a poor cat and some weird yellow goo/acid. This movie is not for the fainthearted. It is damn gory! (Said with a big smile on my face.)
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| The green colour filter was in overdrive during The Collector. |
However, gore can’t sell the movie all by itself (what am I talking about, the Saw series lasted for years!). We need some story to get us interested. This is were The Collector kinda falls apart. The story is paper thin and is never elaborated on, except for, “oh that guy collects people. You’re dead!” There is a sequel out and I hear it’s even better, so I do have my hopes up for that one, which I’ll be watching here shortly. I do have to ask a few questions though. What was the point of all these elaborate traps, if he already had the family caught? The family already being caught, is the only way this movie makes sense, as when would he have had time to setup everything that was shown in the movie, if they weren’t caught yet? Also, who was he expecting to show up and fall into these traps? A little bit of a plot hole, but one that if it was fixed, a movie we wouldn’t have. So, I guess I’ll let it slide, for now.
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| Like a scene straight out of Saw, a lot happens in this bathtub. |
Everything else pretty much has the standard torture porn look about it. The acting is above par from most involved, several scenes speed by, with blaring rock music, or slow down, with even more blaring music. The film is littered with green filters, or orange filters. Yes, it’s pretty much your standard torture porn. Hell, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just don’t get your hopes up that this movie is going to offer anything original that the Saw series hasn’t already drove down our throats (I did mention I still do love the Saw series, right?).
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| Arkin (Josh Stewart) witnessing the graphic horrors in the basement. |
The Collector is guaranteed to please the fans of the Saw series and pretty much anyone else that loves gore. I personally love both, so I did enjoy this movie a lot. I won’t praise it to the end of time and I will admit the story is pretty damn thin, but it does serve up some lovely guts, boobs and originality in the kills. That’s all we can really ask for, when dealing with torture porn.
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