Yell! Magazine’s review of The Collection:
After you watch The Collection, I will tell you now, don’t expect many answers. In the first film, The Collector (2009), we were given a mysterious villain and a cool antihero to root for. The biggest issue I have with The Collection is that it really doesn’t give us any new insight into either our villain or hero. This is something that bothers me, but not enough to ruin the film for me. In fact, I found this to be a very enjoyable film, especially for a new horror sequel.
The Collection, begins shortly after the first one ends. The “collector” is still on the loose and our hero, Arkin, has been taken. If you have seen the trailer, then you have seen a shortened version of the first scene. My first recommendation is not to question the plausibility of it all. How a single man was able to rig an entire building full of deadly traps without anyone noticing would be pretty much impossible. Horror films have never been known for their logic. If they were, then most of them would be over in about 10 minutes.
The story of the sequel is actually far more basic than The Collector was. Arkin escapes, and is strong-armed into helping a team of mercenaries find the daughter of a politician. The mission is to enter a booby-trapped hotel, rescue the girl, and take down the villain. While this plot is pretty familiar, the movie is executed so well and it’s so much fun that it makes little difference. There are many cliches and you will probably see many deaths coming before they happen, but that isn’t such a bad thing. While I craved more of Arkin’s or the collector’s back story, I cannot think of a single moment during the 80-minute run time that was boring. The movie is also much more graphic and just bigger in every way than its predecessor.
Even though the film didn’t do great at the box office, I am hoping video sales give it a slight boost. I am not normally one for sequels, but horror franchises with this much potential are rare to come by these days.
I give a lot of credit to Marcus Dunstan (The Collector, Saw 4), he has a decent eye for horror, but I just think he should stop directing his own screenplays. It is kind of a shame that The Collection didn’t give us more details about Arkin’s family problems that were so well set up in the first film. It also didn’t really give us a whole lot of insight into why The Collector does what he does. He collects bugs, has morbid “body art,” and always takes one person whenever he kills. That’s about as much as you end up learning about The Collector.
