A surprisingly stylish and confident high-concept thriller.
The Collector (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:44
Fresh:11
Rotten:33
Average Rating:4/10
Consensus: Increasingly tedious displays of gore makes this torture porn home-invasion-horror more programmatic than provocative.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for pervasive sadistic bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity.
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Theatrical Release:Jul 31, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $7,674,322
Synopsis:
THE COLLECTOR follows the story of handyman and ex-con Arkin, who aims to repay a debt to his ex-wife by robbing his new employer’s country home. Unfortunately for Arkin, a far worse enemy has...
THE COLLECTOR follows the story of handyman and ex-con Arkin, who aims to repay a debt to his ex-wife by robbing his new employer’s country home. Unfortunately for Arkin, a far worse enemy has already laid claim to the property – and the family. As the seconds tick down to midnight, Arkin becomes a reluctant hero trapped by a masked “Collector” in a maze of lethal invention – the Spanish Inquisition as imagined by Rube Goldberg – while trying to rescue the very family he came to rob.
The project, produced by Fortress Features’ Brett Forbes and Patrick Rizzotti and Imaginarium Entertainment Group’s Julie Richardson, stars Josh Stewart (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Criminal Minds), Daniella Alonso (Friday Night Lights, The Hills Have Eyes 2), Michael Reilly Burke (Lincoln Heights, 24), Andrea Roth (Rescue Me, War), Madeline Zima (Californication, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle), Karley Scott-Collins (Pulse 2, The Class), Robert Wisdom (The Wire, The Forgotten) and Juan Fernandez (The Lost City, A Man Apart). --© Freestyle
Starring: Madeline Zima, Andrea Roth, Daniella Alonso, Robert Wisdom
Starring: Madeline Zima, Andrea Roth, Daniella Alonso, Robert Wisdom, Josh Stewart, Michael Reilly Burke
Director: Marcus Dunstan
Director: Marcus Dunstan
Screenwriter: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Studio: Freestyle Releasing
Reviews for The Collector
This ultra-sadistic, efficiently single-minded Grand Guignol endurance test plays like something cooked up by a clever 14-year-old devotee of Bloody-Disgusting.com.
what happens when Dario Argento's Suspiria gives Elmore Leonard a drunken booty call.
You will squirm, but aren't we getting a bit desensitized to these routine torture flicks? It's like seeing a pop songstress get naked for the billionth time -- yeah, she's hot, but we have all seen it before.
Amid all the blood and punishment [it] works the suspense chain along with a wrenching soundtrack and a gritty film stock that harkens back to the old horror flicks of the 70s
Dunstan clearly delivers what horror fans desire: a leap from their seats.
How I clamor for a contemporary horror film that understands that extreme gore does not equal genuine scariness.
This is the sort of cheap bilking that separates completists from masochists; the brief suffering onscreen is nothing compared with the agony scary-movie buffs will feel after being so thoroughly cheated.
A sub-Saw knockoff that manages to be brutal yet monotonous, not to mention monstrously unpleasant.
Exactly the movie you'd expect from a couple of guys whose main claim to fame is having written the last couple Saw movies.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then "The Collector" flatters the heck out of "Saw."
If you didn't already know The Collector was written by two Saw franchise hacks, and directed by one of them, it would soon become as obvious as a fish hook to the face.
Once things get rolling it's actually decent. But the first 25 minutes are flat and boring. Can't quite recommend it.
Hardcore horror film with a storyline that resembles a particularly nasty Itchy and Scratchy cartoon.
Watching The Collector becomes an experience not so much of dread as big virtual ouches.
Could there be a less appealing tagline to a movie than 'from the writers of Saw IV, V and VI?'
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