When you keep people kidnapped in a box, do you ever worry about government intervention? Is this another personal freedoms issue? “You can have my imprisoned, tortured, luggage girl when you pry her from my cold, dead fingers.” (Editorial note: apologies; this was written well before the Newtown massacre) And what do you say when you want to take your body-filled trunk places? Excuse me … pardon, coming through. Sorry, just taking my luggage for a walk. Do you use the HOV lane on the freeway?
In The Collector, we learned of a serial murderer who booby traps domiciles with the same exuberance as Kevin McCallister. Apparently, the fellow is quite shy and can only stand the company of one boxed person, so he kills the rest. How the FBI can’t find this guy is among the sillier non-plots you’ll ever not meet. In The Collection, we get to visit his lair, which looks a lot like every.single warehouse maze of blood, infection, and grotesque surprise found in every.single Saw movie. The Collection is the type of film which views innovation as unleashing a thresher on a dance floor and risqué as the gorgeous heroine (Emma Fitzpatrick) has a boys’ haircut.
Unpleasant is the only way to properly describe The Collection. No other word quite fits and, yet, unpleasant is a grand understatement. The Collection is a film for people who get a kick out of seeing a man purposely break his own arm in order to escape a cell (using the newly increased bendiness of said appendage, of course). If your next thought is, “how do use a broken arm?” well, you’re not alone. The highlight
of this Collection of blood and poorly shot torture is the thrifty 82-minute run-time. This is the lone highlight.
You know what the most eye-catching thing in The Collection was? Beneath the Mexican wrestler mask, the bad guy has pristine white teeth. This struck me as funny beyond belief – what does this guy’s day look like? Wake from a catnap on a nail bed, do some pull-ups, drink his urine, strap #7 down for a drug-induced nightmare, set a beartrap in a crawl space, nail #5 to the wall by her joints and then say to himself, “did I brush today? Hmmmm. Oral hygiene is important. Better break out the floss.” In addition the teeth fetish, our villain has managed the art of drug-induced zombification. That’s a term I never imagined saying before.
To say this film doesn’t make a lick of sense is among the greater understatements of the year. Why pack in breakable luggage? Why don’t the people just escape from inside the trunk by tearing the siding? Why is Collector’s own home filled with booby traps? How does he transport the human-filled box from van to home without a dolly? Why doesn’t he ever set off his own traps by accident? Why does he dress like a Mexican wrestler? I’d explore these questions if I cared, but it’s pretty obvious this was just a Saw rip-off. Why is it so hard to escape from these places, anyway? It’s like they’re 99% interior – can’t you find an outer wall and battering-ram through the drywall? Boy-haircut babe manages to escape from her box by manipulating, I swear, her spare bra. I mean, she removes a piece of clothing –clearly a bra- and manipulates it to flip the lock thus escaping, but ruining the piece of clothing in the process. Then she continues to wear a different-colored bra for the rest of the film.
Maybe she has … a Collection.
There once was a man who’d collect
Blood and torment from sad subject
His unoriginal sin
Doesn’t even begin
To make me haul up the flag marked “reject.”
Rated R, 82 Minutes
D: Marcus Dunstan
W: Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton
Genre: Private torture
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who miss the saw franchise
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Everybody else
Tell me this is not a sequel… Oh, yes, yes it is a sequel to The Collector. That explains it then as that was one of the most stupid films I’ve ever seen.