The Collector

Home Alone (in hardcore mode) mashed up with the best of the Saw series. I can't go below 4 stars just for creating such an iconic villain that the viewer learns nothing substantial about the entire time (except that he revels in traps, torture, and murder). Within the subgenre of "butchery made for a few bucks" (cf. 3 million), this is a very well done little hell.[75%] (2021-08-31)

Home Alone with a twist; here the thief is the savior from a far worse guest. You can never have too many inventive "trap" movies, and the screenwriter of the middle instalments of the Saw franchise cannot be denied, but I have to admit that the older I get, the harder "torture porn" movies get to sit through, especially when there is an overabundance of fishing hooks in them. A solid horror flick, but one and done for me. (2021-05-01)

This film has the same problem as Martyrs. It’s a twisted slaughter-fest in which we know nothing about the characters and therefore have no sympathy for them. In this case, that was obviously the point, but I still couldn't help that I was bored. It’s not because I loathed the film, but simply because pretty soon the barrage of sophisticated traps ate away at me. Then, you start digging into the logic of the plot and the behavior of the characters... and the film loses. (2010-02-10)

Yes, The Collector is clearly a film that aims to make an impression, it's a film for effect, but that doesn't change the fact that the desired effect really does occur. It's raw, it's depressing, and it's gruesome, and that's exactly how it was meant to be. Moreover, within its genre, the film is quite inventive and doesn't settle for merely letting people die. The Collector isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it does feel like it injects some fresh blood into the genre. And there's definitely no shortage of blood to be had in it. (2014-01-24)

I don't give a fuck about some logic and I honestly don't care how much an adult Kevin McAllister could spread around a house in two hours just to get it in there. What irks me more is how the film tries to be enlightened and innovative in the slasher genre and ends up piling on the same bunch of clichés that don't define this subgenre (get a clue already), but instead relegate it to the level of the already seen a billion times. There's that horny teenage duo again, there's that stupid hope in the arrival of a cop, there's that ending sucked out of a finger or something. Oh well. (2013-01-20)