"The Collection" is a 2012 horror thriller that stars Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Christopher McDonald, and Randall Archer. Archer, who plays The Collector, a mass-murderer who takes living trophies from his massacres for his private sadistic pleasures, had a recurring role in the TV series "Angel" (1999-2004) and supporting roles in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (2011) and "The Book of Eli" (2010) prior to doing this film. McDonald is Mr. Peters, the disabled, wealthy father of Elle, played by Fitzpatrick. Before Elle is captured by The Collector at a underground nightclub that is really a setup for slaughter, she meets Arkin (Stewart), whom she releases from a red trunk in which The Collector had locked him. Severely wounded, Arkin escapes, leaving Elle to replace him in The Collector’s trunk.

A known felon, Arkin is suspected by the police for being the murderer, but Mr. Peters knows better. He makes Arkin an offer he can't refuse:  freedom and a cash payment if he helps a handpicked rescue team locate Elle. Arkin is the only person who has seen The Collector face-to-face and lived to tell about it. When he has located The Collector in a derelict hotel, he is forced at gunpoint to lead the team, headed by Elle's protector Lucello (Lee Tergesen), inside, where he has to help rescue Elle while facing again the bizarre and gruesome nightmares of The Collection and its owner.

 

Directed by Marcus Dunstan, whose previous films include "Saw IV" (2007), "Saw V" (2008),  "The Collection" picks up where "The Collector" (2009) -- also directed by Dunstan -- leaves off. Both Arkin and The Collector are links between the two films, both of which were written by Dunstan and Patrick Melton. This film focuses on the sadistic Collector and reveals his Collection, which includes both still-living and dead but preserved examples of his mutilating torture. As in the first film, booby traps that maim and kill are The Collector's trademark method of killing his victims. In the sequel, however, they are planted in his “home,” a run-down, defunct hotel that The Collector has turned into a labyrinth of horror. It's a fun house where the blood and gore are all too real. For some extreme gorehounds, it might be not too impressive, but it will do the trick for most horror fans whose tastes run to slasher, grindhouse, and torture porn films.

This is fortunate because the plot is somewhat thin and predictable. The Collector himself, however, is a potential horror franchise in the making. Since the ending sets up another potential Collector movie, we will just have to wait and see if the third time is truly the charm for Dunstan and Melton.

 

~TX Frisco Kid~