THE COLLECTOR (2009)

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the torture-trap genre of horror. I think I've only seen one or two installments of the SAW series and I tend to lean towards slashers, giallos, zombies and monsters when making my sinematic selections. But my interest was more than a tad piqued after hearing about the upcoming THE COLLECTION, in which a father (Christopher McDonald) hires a group of mercenaries to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a masked killer known as The Collector.

I soon discovered the flick – due out November 30th – is a sequel to 2009's THE COLLECTOR (duh!), a torture-trap/heist mash-up that somehow flew under my radar and is not to be confused with the 1965 film of the same name starring Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar. A quick visit to Netflix later the original was headed to my mailbox for a matinee spread out over a few lunchtimes. Ahh, such is the life of a work-at-home Horrordad™.

Arkin (Josh Stewart, who ably carries the flick and resembles a younger/handsomer David Patrick Kelly) is a shifty-looking handyman who has been casing the home of his latest employees for months. After locating the family's jewel safe he seizes upon the opportunity presented by their vacation to break into the house, steal a sizable gem, and fence it to save his gal-pal and adolescent daughter from the clutches of some bad men.

What begins as a tense, dark-and-stormy night jewel heist turns much, much worse as Arkin realizes the house is a nightmare of booby traps and the family is in the clutches of the titular masked killer. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between thief and killer as Arkin works to save the family and his own skin.

With its emphasis on grisly, torturous booby traps and funhouse-gone-horribly-wrong atmosphere it came as no surprise that THE COLLECTOR was directed and co-written by Marcus Dunston, co-screenwriter (with Patrick Melton) of the last four SAW installments, not to mention the FEAST trilogy and the underrated PIRANHA 3DD.

THE COLLECTOR is wonderfully schizophrenic, coolly alternating between can't-look-away tension and Rube Goldberg-ian booby traps that amp up the itchy-skitchy factor. I didn't dig it quite as much as the Chrome Skull flicks (LAID TO REST and CHROME SKULL: LAID TO REST 2) but I can't wait to see how they add action flick tropes to the mix in THE COLLECTION and I just might have to visit their SAW series entries. – DT

THE COLLECTOR is available from Amazon.


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