THE COLLECTION. Because a horror is only as good as its villain

This is a bigger treat for Saw fans—Markus Dunstan‘s The Collection not only attempts to match those images in terms of cinematic carnage but also spices them up with action movie tropes and a strong main character. The Collector is a hidden, exceptionally brutal serial killer wearing a black mask. He attacks homes and workplaces, killing everyone except one person, whom he then takes to his collection. The police hunt for him, but to no avail. The community is terrified.

Meanwhile, Elena goes to a nightclub with her friends, but the fun ends when she discovers a large crate containing the collector’s latest victim, a man named Arkin. Shortly after, almost everyone in the club is massacred by giant blades spinning like a combine harvester. Arkin escapes the trap, but Elena is abducted by the titular psychopath. Desperate, Elena’s father organizes a group of mercenaries to find her and eliminate the Collector. Arkin is supposed to help them find the killer’s hideout.

There’s a specific target audience for this kind of cinema, and if the mention of a combine harvester didn’t put you off, The Collection might be the movie for you. Otherwise, you can stop reading this review now because nothing I say will influence the decision to not go to the movies on a winter evening to watch a film about a masked psychopath. Still here? You liked Saw, I understand. Me too, at least the first one. The Collection isn’t as good as that film, but it’s still more enjoyable than any of its sequels. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to watch sequels detached from the original, and Dunstan’s film might be such a case—after all, The Collection is the second part of the unknown The Collector from 2009. Oops…

Not that The Collection is incomprehensible to viewers unfamiliar with the previous film. The screenwriters, aware of the “popularity” of the original, provide enough information about the titular character and Arkin at the beginning of the film so that nobody gets lost, while not mentioning anything about the events leading to the abduction of the latter. It went like this (those who don’t want to know, skip to the next paragraph): needing money to pay off his wife’s debts, Arkin breaks into the home of a family for whom he works as a handyman. Soon he discovers that the house is rigged with traps, and the occupants are trapped in the basement by a masked psychopath. A cat-and-mouse game begins because Arkin, although still not giving up theft, decides to save the family, while the Collector remains unaware of his presence in the house for a long time.

Somewhere I read that The Collection relates to The Collector as Cameron’s Aliens to Scott’s Alien. Both sequels opt for more action, introducing heavily armed commandos into the mix. However, I would compare Dunstan’s films to the first two parts of Raimi’s Evil Dead, which are more variations on the same theme, where everything is more in the second part. It’s no different here—the house becomes an old hotel, with deadlier and more spectacular traps, and the victims numbering in the tens. We also get to know the titular character a bit better and the secret of his collection. The scale is bigger, but we don’t experience the same atmosphere of horror known from the first part. The strength of that film lay in the ordinariness of the surroundings, where the house was just an ordinary house, without any embellishments, yet getting out of it seemed like a miracle. Meanwhile, the interior of the building where the Collector resides is like a nightmare. It’s closer to the spaces known from Saw, entirely unnecessarily as it turns out, because Dunstan is a good stylist who can create a disturbing atmosphere through appropriate lighting and framing.

There’s a rule that says a film is only as good as its villain. The director’s great achievement is creating not only a new “genius of crime,” as stated on the poster, but also an excellent counterbalance to him. Arkin is a character we quickly identify with because he’s damn scared for his own skin. Both parts depict his efforts to save himself and others, a constant struggle between fear and courage, and ultimately helplessness when the opponent proves to be more determined to win. Josh Stewart, who plays Arkin, has the face of a sad thug who still won’t give up without a fight.

The diptych about the Collector is actually a story of the clash between an almost indestructible killer and a man who also seems indestructible. One sets traps, the other escapes them. Without knowledge of the original The Collection, especially its ending, they don’t have the impact they should. Interestingly, the first part also feels incomplete, ending when Arkin is abducted. Only both films together form a complete whole that can bring a lot of joy to genre fans.