The Collector feels a bit like a cheep knock off of the SAW franchise complete with booby traps, decapitations, body parts being severed and a good amount of blood. It starts off strong, but fades midway through. It has one solid idea that doesn’t contain any nuance or depth.
When ex-con Arkin’s (Josh Stewart) baby mamma gets into trouble with some loan sharks, he decides to help her out by robbing someone’s house. Thinking the family is away on vacation he figures it is easy money that is until he realizes that someone else is in the house and taking pleasure in torturing the family.
Director Marcus Dunstan (and his writing partner Patrick Melton) is one of the only former winners of Matt Damon/Ben Affleck’s Project Greenlight to actually have a career, so I find myself rooting for the guys. But they continue to turn out junk like this, I may just have to stop. The direction is horrible and it is one of the ugliest looking films I’ve seen since the original SAW. Only SAW actually had a point, something to say about “humanity,” and a brilliant script. This has nothing.
While the entire film is basically told from Arkin’s point of view his inactions during obvious moments of action struck me as odd. There were several instances when you want to scream, jump the guy while his back is turned, don’t just sit there and watch. It’s akin to the horror movie cliché where the victims run upstairs instead of out of the house.
On top of all it’s other issues, it is one of the ugliest looking films that I’ve seen in awhile. Draped in dark blues, greens and yellows the atmosphere is certainly moody and sort of creepy but the weird mix of colors made it hard to see what was going on.
Is it too much to ask for a little back-story? I’m not asking for anything complex, just a line or two explaining the motivations of The Collector (Randall Archer). Give me something that I can hang my hat on. Without any kind of backstory on the killer the movie comes across as torture porn that kind of made me feel dirty watching it.
Final Grade D