Movie Review: "The Collection" - East Idaho News
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Movie Review: “The Collection”

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GETTY E 052211 FilmReelGold?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1354276860147Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — From the creators of the Saw franchise comes The Collection, a film that, as far as I can tell, is about killing and torturing as many people as possible in the most brutal, graphic, gratuitously violent ways possible.

In this particular town, at least 50 people have gone missing and presumed dead for no rhyme or reason. All types of people; old, young, male, female, entire families, friends. And even a criminal named Arkin (Josh Stewart) who has served his time but is now happily married.

Naturally, the community is living in fear — except for a few hundred crazy kids who won’t let a killer get in the way of their good time at an underground club.  Those kids include Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), who we meet at the beginning of the movie as a young girl, the daughter of a wealthy man named Mr. Peters (Christopher McDonald). We see the two of them in a horrific car accident, which is supposed to explain their incredible father-daughter bond but is at best a clunky, forced exposition that does nothing to make the plot feel organic or elicit any audience empathy for either Elena or Mr. Peters.

Back to the underground club. As the great Admiral Ackbar once said a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: “It’s a trap!”

Meet our antagonist — a rather large, black-leather-mask-wearing psychopath who has a passion for torture and murder. He’s The Collector, a guy who literally collects his victims, throws them into a red trunk, brings them home, slices ‘em, dices ‘em, sews them back together, pumps them full of drugs, keeps them in cages, chases them through his booby-trapped killing resort (an old abandoned hotel located in the “wrong” section of town) and often keeps the results suspended in large fish tanks.

The Collector has turned the club into one giant killing machine, where he traps the patrons and kills just about all of them using a mechanism that is essentially a lawn mower for humans. It’s tough to watch but if you love slasher porn, this is the highlight of the movie.

Elena survives, but The Collector stuffs her into that red trunk and takes her back to his place. In the melee, Arkin, the former criminal The Collector also abducted, escapes.

Mr. Peters isn’t having it. He has his personal assistant Lucello (Lee Turgesen) assemble a team to extract Elena. Lucello recruits Arkin to be a part of it, whereupon an awful movie ensues.

The Collector himself is supposed to be terrifying but the fact he could be mistaken for a reject from the Blue Man Group on steroids does little to make one quake in one’s boots.

Frankly, no matter how sick and twisted, slasher films can be fantastic when they’re well-written and you care about the characters. The Collection aspires to be highly-stylized, creative slasher porn.  Instead, it’s just slasher porn that’s simply awful. I wish there was a way I could un-see The Collection.

Zero stars.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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