So, do all serial killers these days need tools and snares
and an intricate system of booby traps in order to ply their trade? If the
current trend in horror is to be believed, then yes, yes they do. I was hoping
that we were going to leave that one to the “Saw” franchise, but from the looks
of “The Collection”, that’s not going to happen. Granted, both writer/director
Marcus Dunstan and writer Patrick Melton are veterans of that particular set of
films (they also delivered “Feast”), so you should expect a device or two.
Still, it’s gimmicky, and not particularly frightening.
For a while, however, “The Collection” is a pretty decent
amount of fun—tongue in cheek, schlocky, and soaked in an absurd amount of gore.
While that’s fun for a while, after a short time it gets rather wearisome.
That’s an impressive feat for movie that’s only 75 minutes long (the run time
is listed at 82 minutes, but it started at 7:30 and I walked out of the theater
at 8:45), it shouldn’t have time to get that bland.
A low-budget sequel to a low-budget horror flick (2009’s
“The Collector”), the most important lesson you’ll learn from “The Collection”
is that you should never go clubbing when there’s a serial killer on the loose.
This is a lesson Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) learns the hard way. Everyone else in
the shitty, secret goth rave she goes to would have learned that same thing, if
they weren’t slaughtered in a scene that is best seen to be believed. Dunstan
and Melton aren’t messing around when it comes to blood. The masked killer,
known only as the Collector, cuts down the entire place with what is
essentially an oversized lawnmower. It’s a good time.
The sequel picks up shortly after the first film. While
Elena inadvertently kills an entire rave by setting off the lawnmower, she also
manages to free Arkin O’Brien (Josh Stewart), the protagonist from the first
film, from the clutches of the Collector. He then takes her to add to his
collection. Arkin later winds up leading a band of commandos to go rescue
Elena. It’s best not to look too deep into some things, but she has a rich dad,
which obviously means he has his own personal army of mercenaries on standby.
When they invade the Hotel Argento they find a waiting labyrinth of traps,
piles of corpses, and a bunch of, you guessed it, collections. They’re supposed
to be creepy, like bugs and limbs and such, but they’re not. At all.
Most attempts to scare are laughable, like when, for no
apparent reason, the Collector decides to unleash a slew of tarantulas to crawl
across the floor, or a room full of hanging bug-zappers. Yeah, I don’t get it
either. He also has gang of attack junkies, people he’s abducted and addicted
to drugs, who are like shrieking zombie caricatures lurking in his dank
basement. That’s it. There’s a museum of human oddities, some tongue cutting,
and a face stapling scene, but nothing like characters, or any plot besides
moving the blood-soaked actors forward from one bit to the next.
Like I said, it starts out entertaining, but gets old real
quick. The first film feels much tighter, and in trying to broaden their
horizons and world, “The Collection” unravels. Given too much space, it
devolves into a brightly lit, day-glo excursion that is an obvious attempt to
expand the brand and father a whole slew of little baby “Collector” movies.
Although the end is a bit of horror audience wish fulfillment, it’s also super
contrived, and a little too on the nose to truly deliver.
Still, if you’re into this sort of gory horror, or just in
the mood to watch an overly bloody schlock fest, then you might enjoy “The
Collection”. It has a time and a place, and a few moments that are actually a
damn blast, but overall it just falls flat and you’ll walk away with a
disinterested shrug of your shoulders.
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