Friday, 14 December 2012

The Collection (2012) Review by Shivom Oza – All Blood And Gore, No Real Substance

2.5/5 Stars

The horror film, ‘The Collection’, revolves around a serial killer, The Collector (the film is a sequel to the 2009 film, ‘The Collector’), who kills all victims but one, whom he kidnaps. This time, it’s a young girl called Elena.

The film is interspersed with instances of blood, violence and gore. There is no real motive shown for the actions of the Collector in this film. So, you have plenty of mindless slayings on show here! Watch, if you prefer this genre.

Elena Peters (Emma Fitzpatrick) is taken by her friends to a secret party at a dingy-looking discotheque. Here, she sees her boyfriend making out with another woman. Distraught, she punches the guy and storms off and locks herself in a room.

Here, she discovers a red trunk and opens it to find an injured man. This man, Arkin (Josh Stewart), severely injured, has been locked away in the trunk by the faceless Collector (Randall Archer). Elena, who panics on seeing Arkin spring out of the box, steps on a trip wire. This initiates a series of traps. Suddenly, you have a huge rotating mechanism with knives run through the dance floor, shearing hundreds of young men and women. Next up, hundreds of small swords are flung at the others, who get stabbed and die instantly. Finally, the rest of the survivors are trapped inside a small room and are smashed by the lowering ceiling. On top of the ceiling, you spot the Collector for the first time. While Arkin jumps out of a window and escapes, Elena gets abducted by the serial killer.

Arkin, who injures himself by valiantly jumping out of the window and is admitted to a hospital, is threatened by mercenaries, hired by Elena’s father, to help them search for the girl. So, all of them set off for this deserted location where the Collector keeps his collections. You get to see arms, limbs among other body parts stacked at one place. Trunks, similar to the one Arkin was trapped in, are seen all around this place. There are living humans at this place too. However, they have been tortured and drugged heavily, leading them to becoming violent themselves.

The film doesn’t have any plot or purpose. All it encompasses is blood, violence and gore. While the action has been very well conceived, shot, edited and consequently, pulled off, the film relies a lot on its 82-minute length to keep the engagement factor alive. While you don’t need acting geniuses to pull off such a film, the actors playing Elena and Arkin, have been performed quite nicely. The film is close-in line with the ‘SAW’ films. So if you enjoyed those, you will enjoy this one too.  The censored version has a couple of gut-wrenching sequences, which will definitely shake you up a bit.

Not quite a must-watch. Yet, you will like it if you prefer this particular genre.

Shivom Oza

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