Image from The Latino Review.
Right from the beginning, you’re smacked with gore. A quartet of teens heads to a happening party at an old warehouse, with a special password required to get in. But after a few dances are danced and a few feels are copped, our evil killer shows up, behind the scenes, and sets forth a Rube Goldberg series of devices to slaughter almost everyone. Well, you know, some are left behind for extra special torture and such, but the movie doesn’t dwell on them (as Hostel did), and of course one of them, Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) actually survives. Elena finds a man trapped in a box, and when she lets him out, yet another trap is unleashed that just nearly gets her. Then there’s a running around bit, then the man-no-longer-in-the-box uses the body of a dead teen to escape the building entirely.
The following gives nothing away. The man is who’s left from the first film, apparently, and although he thinks he’s escaped for good, some surly looking henchmen with guns come looking for him. Apparently our Elena has a moneyed father who’s hired mercenaries to get her back, and our mystery man Arkin (Josh Stewart) is the only possible key; he must lead them to the killer’s lair.
Those of you who have read this far like this kind of movie, probably. You liked the Saw films, more or less. Well, this is like Saw in that there’s plenty of icky fluids and shock value, but there’s really none of the morality. Not a whit, and that’s not a bad thing. What we have is a collector of humans for various purposes. We don’t know why. We don’t care why. We just want to get out of this place.
Sometimes movies try the same tricks over and over to spook the audience, and eventually the return on investment withers on the vine. But here, even late into the game, moments occur that just seem out of nowhere, blindsiding you into chills. This is a movie that quite consciously decides not to show you everything, to allow looming darkness scare you more than the horrors you can see. As an aside, they’re both kind of terrifying.
So as a horror movie, this is stunningly stylish without being glossy or gratutious – at least as far as horror movies are concerned. It’s well-thought-out frights; that’s what I’m getting at. The characters aren’t superficial, but we don’t know much more than we really need to know about them. Frankly, for some we know almost nothing, and that too is a good thing. Their backstories could even be a movie. Who knows.
The Collection is an artistic gem in the realm of the macabre, a seamless combination of slasher movies and psychological thrillers. The acting is minimalistic, as befits the genre, and the effects are complex and, at times, mind boggling.
The Collection: ***
