The Collection
The film is a sequel to a little-seen movie from 2009 called The Collector. I remember seeing the movie when it came out, but damn if I can remember anything about it. No need to worry, should you be unwise enough to walk into this movie. There's so little plot here, you'll be able to pick up on everything just fine. All you need to know is that there's some serial killer who dresses all in black (complete with a black mask over his head) who calls himself the Collector. He goes through a lot of trouble setting up overly complicated torture devices in people's homes and other public places, just so he can watch people suffer. He also likes to perform twisted surgeries on his victims, hold them hostage and put make up on them to the point that they look like dolls, and he has a vat of dismembered body parts just in case the need should ever arise for a bloody stump of an arm, I guess. In all of his crimes, he leaves one victim alive, so he can torture them. At the end of the first movie, that victim was Arkin (Josh Stewart), who is back for the sequel.
But he's not the focus of the movie. Our lead character (or the closest this movie comes to one) is a teenage girl named Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), who after getting stood up by her cheating boyfriend, decides to sneak out of her home and go to a dance party with some friends. She realizes too late that the dance party is all a giant trap set up by the Collector himself. He watches silently from the catwalks above all the dancing teens, and then he lowers some massive spinning blades, which wipes out the entire room, except for Elena. He then takes her back to his hideout (an old, abandoned hotel), and forces her to watch him perform vivisection experiments on some of his previous victims. All of this happens in the first 15 or so minutes of the movie, by the way.
Somehow, her concerned father (Christopher McDonald) finds out that the Collector has his daughter, although there should be no way he could know this, since he was asleep when his daughter left the house to go dancing, and didn't even know she left to go dancing in the first place. He hires a team of mercenaries to find her. Aside from the leader of this team (who has a personal history with Elena's family), none of these people he hires have names, personalities, or characters. They exist simply to be sliced open by the Collector when they finally track him down. They turn to Arkin for help, since he survived his last encounter with the madman, and knows all about him. He leads them to the abandoned hotel where the Collector lives, which is naturally filled with trick walls, giant spikes, rabid dogs, and plenty of dark hallways for them to poke around in, so the Collector can leap out of the shadows and disembowel them. We pretty much get different variations on this same scene over and over again until the movie decides we've had enough, and the end credits roll.
The Collection is a vile, ugly, and brutal film. Its defenders will obviously say that's the point, and will probably tell me I just couldn't stomach the movie. I've sat through plenty of gory films, many made with a lot more wit and style than this one. The movie is strewn with murky colors, surgery experiments gone wrong, dark hallways, actors who show up only to be slaughtered seconds later, and features a soundtrack comprised of tortured screams. It is contemptible all the way through. Not once does it try to tell something resembling a coherent narrative, nor does it even try to tell us anything about these people we see up on the screen. Everybody here exists to be murdered in senseless ways, to be tortured, or to be forced to roll around in blood, bile, and discarded human appendages.
This is a movie that's been made for viewers with no attention span. It doesn't tell a story, it's simply a series of gruesome images. When it's over, what are we left with? Just a lot of misery. There's so little exposition, I doubt if watching the original movie would help with your understanding on who these people are. As if all this isn't enough, this is a profoundly stupid film. You'll find yourself asking questions like, how did the Collector transform a public dance hall and bar into a massive death trap with slashing blades, prison bars, and crushing walls without anyone noticing? And isn't it dangerous lining his hideout with deadly booby traps in every single room? What happens if he accidentally triggers one if he's just walking down the hall? Of course, we're not supposed to think in a movie like this. We're supposed to be so appalled by the images up on the screen that we don't question its total lack of sense. I guess the filmmakers didn't try hard enough, because I was bored enough to ask these questions.
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