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Film Reviews

THE COLLECTOR

By • Aug 9th, 2009 •

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I like to view every horror movie that gets released. But after sitting through two of the SAW sequels, I promised myself that I would never watch another. Today I broke that vow, but not purposely. Not unlike the victims of these films – I was tricked! Little did I know they disguised the next SAW under the title THE COLLECTOR.

Sean Penn look-alike Josh Stewart plays Arkin, a handyman who is desperate to pay back a debt to his ex-wife so that she will allow him to spend time with his little girl. Apparently the money has something to do with loan sharks. This is a subplot that seems completely unnecessary. A far more believable situation would have been if he needed to pay child support – but I’m not the writer (thank god) so let’s move on.

Conveniently, Arkin is an ex-con whose specialty is picking locks, and the house he is working on has a great big safe with a valuable stone inside. Even more convenient is that the whole family is going away on vacation this weekend.

Arkin breaks into the house only to find that someone a lot badder than himself already lurks inside. He looks exactly like “The Gimp” from PULP FICTION and he booby traps the entire house like Macaulay Culkin in HOME ALONE. I have no idea why he does this, because there’s no way he could have known that the handyman would be coming back to burgle the house, and he could have easily kidnapped the family without going through such trouble. But once again, I’m not the writer.

In HOME ALONE, we get to see how the traps work. And even if far-fetched, they are quite clever. In this movie tripping over a wire inexplicably leads to a person being catapulted into a giant fly-paper stuck with daggers. I actually can’t tell you how one of these traps is set up. I doubt the filmmakers can either, they are just too anxious to get the people in them. Suspense? Who needs it. All that does is take time away from watching a cat melt in acid (and that’s the real reason why people watch horror movies).

Sadly, the confusing traps are the least of the film’s problems. If you really want to collect something, try gathering up all the failed logic. ( i.e. the killer cuts the electricity so the victims can’t turn on the lights, but the television still works fine).

Even with all that being said, the concept still has hope. I can forgive sloppy filmmaking and see past illogical writing if the movie shows me a fun time, but like the SAW films, it takes itself way too seriously for me to derive any kind of enjoyment.

If I were you, I’d hold off a couple weeks, save the twelve bucks, and get my death fix on the next FINAL DESTINATION movie. Even if it’s no masterpiece, at least those filmmakers are laughing with you.

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