Review: The Collector, Hooked on Hard-Core Horror

Maybe you Saw something like this before, but dedicated horror hounds should still enjoy this grisly riff on the new wave of extreme Euro horror

Review in a Hurry: Feast/Saw sequel scribes Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton branch off from their established franchises in this uncompromisingly brutal tribute to the new wave of European extreme horror (Inside, Martyrs, Them, etc.). Dunstan directs his first feature with a good eye, but the material doesn't feel as realistic as the duo might have hoped.

The Bigger Picture: Desperate to save his wife and daughter from defaulting on a debt to some loan sharks, a home-security consultant named Arkin (Josh Stewart), who doubles as a burglar, goes for one last big score without the usual amount of meticulous planning.

Not that additional planning would have helped, because this heist happens on the night that an extremely sadistic serial killer has already broken into the house and rigged the place with elaborate booby traps. After falling victim to some of the more minor ones, Arkin finds himself in the position of trying to save the already brutalized family from the ingeniously nasty masked man who, they figure out, only wants to keep one of them alive—but which one?

A key aspect of the new European horror that Dunstan and Melton are trying to emulate here is extreme acts of deranged violence, usually visited upon someone in their home. They certainly have that part down. The villain's traps are akin to those in Saw, but without the escape hatch (and animal lovers be warned: An extremely horrific feline homicide is depicted).

Another hallmark of these neo Euro horror flicks, however, is that they tend to be somewhat believable. The villain may be crazy and/or superstrong, but there's a real sense that "this could happen." Here? Not so much. The way the house is rigged would take days for one guy to set up, and even though the house is out in the country, it's made clear that the place is constantly full of people who would not be inclined to aid the guy. But, whatever. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers also did preposterous things even before rising from the dead.

If you're the sort of person who likes to sneer derisively at what you consider "torture porn," don't go to The Collector. If you're out on a date at the mall, don't go. If the idea of watching close-ups of fish hooks penetrating skin makes you uncomfortable, definitely don't go.

If you're a hard-core horror fan, however, and you've been clamoring for more hard-R violence and fewer needless remakes...this is for you.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Read any negative review of Hostel II, and you will more-or-less have the critique of this movie, too.