{Movie Review} The Collection

Release Date: November 30, 2012

Director: Marcus Dunstan

Cinematography: Sam McCurdy

Screenplay: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan

Producers: Brett Forbes, Patrick Rizzotti, Mickey Liddell, Julie Richardson

About The Film:

(Taken from the official movie site)

From the writing-directing team Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Saw IV, V, VI and 3D) comes The Collection, a suspense horror film with nonstop thrills at every turn. Directed by Dunstan and starring Josh Stewart (The Dark Knight Rises, The Collector), Emma Fitzpatrick (The Social Network) and Christopher McDonald ("Boardwalk Empire," Requiem for a Dream), the film centers on a traumatized man forced to help rescue a beautiful woman who has become the latest obsession of a crazed killer who "collects" humans in a booby-trapped house of horrors.

When Elena (Fitzpatrick) is talked into attending an underground warehouse party with her friends, she finds herself caught in a nightmarish trap where the revelers are mowed, sliced and crushed to death by a macabre series of contraptions operated by a masked psychopath. When the grisly massacre is over, Elena is the only survivor. But before she can escape, she is locked in a trunk and transported to an unknown location.

Fortunately for Elena, one man - Arkin (Stewart) - knows exactly where she's headed, having just escaped from there with his life and sanity barely intact. Going back is the last thing on Arkin's mind, but Elena's wealthy father (McDonald) hires a crack team of mercenaries to force Arkin to lead them to the killer's lair. But even these hardened warriors are not prepared for what they encounter: an abandoned hotel-turned-torture-chamber, rigged with deadly traps and filled with mangled corpses. Can Arkin and the team get to Elena before she too becomes part of his gruesome "collection"?

Mandy's Review:

My oldest step-daughter and I decided to go see this move this past Sunday. We were the only two people at this particular showing and I'm glad we were. If other patrons had been there, they would've been annoyed by all of our "Oh my God, I can't watch this," "Uuuggghhhh," and "Are you kidding me?!"

Not until I just read the summary above did I realize that there was a prequel to this movie: The Collector. I do not remember seeing the previews for that, so this review is being done without any knowledge of the prequel.

As you know, there's a crazy man on the loose going around mass-murdering people and taking one person from each mass-murder for his collection. They're like living trophies from each murder scene, but then he takes them home and "plays" with them. Some he's murdered, some he's doped up and disfigured, while others he kills outright and then displays them in water in weird positions.

Arkin, as one of the crazy man's captures, has escaped. He was in a closed trunk in one of the underground warehouse party's rooms. Elena finds the room with him in it and decides to let him out ... which, of course, the opened trunk has now become the ignition switch for a crazy killing contraption that's been set up by our killer. Here's my question, though ... Why would the killer risk losing one of his captures by putting him in the trunk at the party? If he needed something heavy to weigh the trunk down, why not use sandbags? If he wanted the sound of someone scratching at the lid of the roof to attract someone to it to open it, why not put a monitor in the trunk with the receiver in another trunk in his lair? Or do a recording? Maybe I'm over-thinking this, but it's what I do.

While Arkin's in the hospital, he gets a visit from Elena's dad's mercenary-hires. Arkin eventually agrees to help them find where he was kept. How can he do this? Apparently, when he was in the trunk heading to the crazy man's lair, he would count to 100 and then cut a mark in his arm when he reached 100. Each mark represented if they went straight, turned, veered, stopped, etc. I can see a desperate man doing that, but here's where my confusion came in: How did he know where to tell the mercenaries to start driving? Granted, I didn't see the first movie and I'm sure it was about Arkin's capture, but after seeing this movie I have to assume that Arkin was in a public setting much like the club. If he was, how did he know where crazy man was parked? This man was locked in a trunk. I don't know about you, but if I'm locked in a trunk, I'm going to start panicking and not pay attention to my surroundings.

Overall, this movie was more gross than scary, which seems to be the direction horror movies are taking nowadays. I did get a little irritated at the end when they kept showing various parts of the killer's body, but wouldn't show his daggum face! They even went so far as to show the back of his head, unmasked, but wouldn't show his face. I know it's to keep you in suspense, but I wanted to see!

While this wasn't one of my favorite movies, the directors and producers did a great job. Even the actors did a great job - not one sucky performance out of any of them. So if you like a gross movie with lots of blood, then The Collection is one you need to see.