THE COLLECTOR (2009)

Studio:       LD Entertainment
Director:    Marcus Dunstan
Writer:       Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Producer:  Julie Richardson, Brett Forbes, Patrick Rizzotti
Stars:     Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke, Andrea Roth, Juan Fernandez, Karley Scott Collins, Daniella Alonso, Robert Wisdom

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A burglar becomes one family’s only hope for survival when a serial killer traps them in a house wired with deadly devices.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A couple comes home one night to find the power cut and a strange trunk in their bedroom. A card on the trunk reads, “For the Collection.” The trunk shakes and when the man opens it, he is grabbed from behind by an unknown assailant.

The Chase family has several contracting crews working on their secluded house. Arkin is installing security. Michael and Victoria’s youngest daughter, Hannah Chase, takes a liking to Arkin and invites him to a tea party. Outside, Arkin finds a wasp nest and mentions it to the exterminator. While smoking a cigarette in his truck, the Chase’s eldest daughter Jill asks him for a drag. She goes inside and has an argument with her mother about having to go on a family vacation. Michael pays Arkin and gives him extra money for his young daughter Cindy.

Arkin visits his daughter at a bowling alley and then talks to his upset wife. She is in debt to some loan sharks. Arkin asks to have until midnight to get her the money. He then meets with his shady partner to say he needs to break into the Chase’s house that night and steal a jewel. His partner does not want to go in this early and they get into a physical altercation before Arkin is reluctantly let go to do the job.

On his way into the house, Arkin is attacked by a chained-up dog outside and his ski mask is torn. Arkin is inside cracking the safe when he hears noises in the house, which are coming from The Collector as he begins trapping the family. Arkin tries to leave but the back door is locked from the inside with four deadbolts. He returns to complete the heist and then hears screaming through the vents. In the bedroom, Arkin finds Michael badly beaten. Thinking that Arkin is the assailant, Michael grabs a golf club but sets off a trap that strings him up to the hallway ceiling. Arkin notices that the windows are boarded and tries to use the phone but the handset stabs his ear. He reaches his hand through the boards on one window and encounters lines of razorblades that slice him open. Downstairs he finds other traps such as a tripwire, razorwire, a chandelier with knives facing downward, nail boards on the staircase, and a floor full of bear traps.

In the basement, Arkin discovers that Michael is now strapped to a chair. He convinces Michael that he is not involved and is told that there is a gun in the upstairs safe and bullets are in the bottom drawer of the bedroom dresser. In the adjacent room, Arkin finds Victoria with duct tape pinned over her eyes. He tells her to start screaming so that The Collector is distracted and Arkin can sneak back upstairs. The Collector holds her tongue with pliers and stops just before clipping it with pruning shears as a warning to her. Arkin opens the safe and takes the gun and a red stone while The Collector tortures Michael. The bullet box is empty but when he hears a noise from the closet, Arkin opens a trunk inside and the man from the prologue scene, Larry Wharton, falls out. Larry tells Arkin that The Collector only kills people he does not want and collects the others. Arkin puts him back in the trunk.

In another room, Arkin loses his boots to a floor covered with acid. He rescues a cat from the same glue trap but it dies from a window rigged like a guillotine. Back in the basement, Arkin discovers Michael hanging upside down with his intestines spilled on the floor. He frees Victoria by picking her handcuffs with a paper clip, but she turns hysteric when she sees her husband and runs upstairs where The Collector stabs her repeatedly. The Collector puts her in a bathtub filled with gasoline and records her screaming while he sews her mouth shut.

Arkin hears Jill and her boyfriend in a car outside but is unable to warn them. The couple makes it inside and starts to have sex on a table when Jill sees The Collector watching them. Jill’s boyfriend fights with him and loses his fingers to a cutting blade before falling in the bear traps. Jill dials 911 but drops the phone when The Collector drags her away. Arkin sets off an alarm clock as a distraction and then cuts Jill loose from her barbwire restraints, but she sets off another trap and is slammed against a wall of nails.

Arkin is unable to rescue Larry. He then manages to finally break through a window and escape. He turns back when he is outside though, and sees little Hannah banging on her window for help. Arkin goes back inside.

The Collector stuffs Larry back in the trunk while Hannah runs away. He catches up to her but is clocked from behind by Arkin’s gun. Arkin and Hannah hole up in her bedroom and plan to break her fish tank and drop a television when The Collector comes inside. They set off their trap, but The Collector only throws Larry’s body through the door, and he is electrocuted instead. Arkin runs into a room with dangling fishhooks and then drops Hannah down a laundry chute. The Collector gets in and fights with Arkin, who is able to remove The Collector’s mask before being knocked unconscious.

Arkin is strung up when he awakens and The Collector pulls out one of Arkin’s teeth. To keep him away from Hannah, who is hiding nearby, Arkin taunts The Collector. The Collector slices Arkin’s stomach and puts a jar of Madagascar cockroaches against the wound when a policeman arrives outside in response to Jill’s aborted 911 call. The Collector goes outside and allows the officer to point his gun, but the cop is attacked by The Collector’s dog that bit Arkin earlier.

Meanwhile, Arkin tears himself loose and discovers that the house is rigged to explode. The Collector takes the shotgun from the police car and brings the dog inside. Arkin and Hannah climb up the laundry chute before the dog can bite them. Upstairs, Arkin puts a flaming cloth in a bucket and uses it to muzzle the attacking dog, which he then throws at the Collector. The Collector destroys the dog with a shotgun blast and starts fighting with Arkin. Arkin subdues him before taking Hannah to the front door. They cannot open the lock so they rig a mirror in front of it. Thinking the mirror image is Hannah and Arkin, the Collector fires at the mirror and blasts open the lock. The Collector then sets off his own chandelier trap while Hannah and Arkin escape. Arkin is hit by a police car and sees an image of Hannah being abducted by The Collector, but it turns out to be just a police officer. Arkin is then strapped into an ambulance. On the way to the hospital, The Collector crashes his exterminator truck into the ambulance and abducts Arkin.

In a post-credits scene, The Collector watches home movies while sitting on the trunk. Arkin makes threats from inside the box and The Collector kicks it with his foot to quiet him down.

---

Review:

“The Collector” has more than once been misreported as starting its life as a “Saw” prequel.  This is not quite true.  What actually happened is that while the script shopped for production money, someone at Twisted Pictures read it and thought, “maybe this can be rewritten into an origin story for Jigsaw.”  That idea then died almost as quickly as it formed.  It is certainly easy to see why the myth persists, though.  “The Collector” owes a clear debt to “Saw” and almost certainly would not have seen the light of a projector bulb had that series never been successful.

Whereas Jigsaw usually designs an individual device for each of his victims, The Collector wires an entire house with traps and lets his victims find them through unfortunate luck.  And whereas Jigsaw has a method to his madness, The Collector just seems interested in killing for killing’s sake.

Remember that scene in Michael Mann’s “The Insider” when Russell Crowe labels cigarettes as a delivery device for nicotine?  “The Collector” is a delivery device for gruesome kills.  Director Marcus Dunstan, who co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator Patrick Melton, may even agree with that statement.  The movie does not pretend to have a story so much as a premise that sets up the mayhem.

Perpetually sleepy-eyed Josh Stewart is a contractor by day and a burglar by night.  Dunstan and Melton clearly know that the audience has to find him likeable despite his criminal behavior.  So what story does exist in the film is mostly devoted to establishing why Stewart has to burgle a nice family in the first place.  In the process of robbing the home of his latest client/mark, Stewart discovers he is not the only one visiting the house without a welcome.  A masked man who collects human beings has rigged the house Rube Goldberg-style to gruesomely trap, torture, or kill his prey.

The character of The Collector has a simple, yet effective visual design.  A distinctive leather mask hides all facial features except for his mouth and eyes that glow creepily for a reason that is never explained.  Juan Fernandez brings personality to the killer even without the aid of dialogue.  He has a spider-like way of moving around with a slight hunch in his back, and a Michael Myers-like way of examining his targets with an intense sense of curiosity.

The Collector begins as a potentially intriguing character.  Similar to the masked intruders of “The Strangers,” The Collector never utters a single word.  Initially, this trait has the desired effect of adding a maddening layer of mystery to the killer.  Who is he?  What are his motives?  How does he choose who to kill and who to collect?  Why he is he doing all of this?  Eventually, the mystery wears off with the realization that he acts this way because he has no real backstory.  He himself is the backstory to explain the traps in the house, and they are the true characters of the film.

The devices themselves require such an intricate amount of planning and preparation that one wonders why even a madman would go through so much trouble to kill or capture someone.  It must take hours to rig the entire house the way The Collector did, assuming it is even possible in the short timeframe he had.  It is not clear what he gains for his efforts, either.  He usually is not in the room when the traps go off, so he does not have the “pleasure” of seeing his labor in action.

Which is the problem with “The Collector.”  It lacks substance behind the carnage.  The unexplained motives of “The Strangers” worked because terrorizing without a purpose is why they were frightening.  Here, it is not the terror that The Collector inflicts that is frightening, but rather the sadistic method in which he does it.  And for such a complicated murder M.O. to go unexplained, the audience is left to find satisfaction only in the deaths themselves.

On the surface, the film has several things going for it.  The acting is believable.  The green and blue color tones create a distinctive tone (even if that color tone is lifted directly from “Saw”).  Gary J. Tunnicliffe’s makeup FX look great.  There’s even a creative shot from a stationary camera inside a barrel-rolling vehicle that is fantastic.  But below that surface sheen is where “The Collector” ceases to exist.  Any search for a deeper purpose for the film only exposes it for being that delivery device I mentioned earlier.

That is perfectly acceptable as long as you know what is in store.  Anyone looking for a taut thriller with a clever story should look elsewhere.  But anyone looking for splatters of red rain or a lighter “torture porn” movie that doesn’t weigh itself down with things like creative depth might be satisfied with “The Collector” as a 90-minute diversion.  Whatever the case, just do not expect “The Collector” to be anything more than what it is: a delivery device for gruesome kills.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Click here for a review of the sequel, "The Collection."

Review Score:  40

---