<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Marcus Dunstan. Starring Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Christopher McDonald, Lee Tergesen

From the writers of the last four Saw films (Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton) comes this sequel to a film called The Collector that slipped Indian theatres by. Don’t worry, you’ll still enjoy this thrill ride of torture porn if you just let go and indulge your inner psychopath.

If you can sit through the bloody gruesomeness of the Saw films then you’ll easily be able to stomach The Collection. Even though director/writer Marcus Dunstan has scored nothing but splat ratings from critics for his slasher films, some of them have achieved cult status like the original Saw movie did. The Collector is basically about this hulking guy who wears a black mask that ties up at the back and goes about hacking young people to death with the use of some nasty and sharp contraptions. Why? Just because he wants to. And that’s the difference between this film and the Saw series. In Saw it was about retribution and twisted justice. Here it’s just plain old maniacal serial butchering.

A serial killer is ravaging the city but Elena’s (Emma Fitzpatrick) friends take her to a secret underground party. There, the Collector unleashes a car wash like rotating machine with blades that hacks all the revellers to bits. Elena however stumbles upon Collector’s previous victim (from the first film), criminal Arkin (Josh Stewart) who escapes but poor Elena is taken to be part of the ‘collection’. Her rich but crippled father sends in her bodyguard Lucello (Lee Tergesen) with Arkin and a team of mercenaries to save her. And then basically they go through a maze of booby traps and blood getting picked off one by one.

Just like in Saw the butchering takes plays with some nifty traps (I thought Saw’s were much cleverer though). Many of the ‘collection’ are victims who are just hanging from walls, almost crucified, just waiting to be slit by the Collector at his whim. He cuts out tongues, limbs, heads and plays with tarantulas. And he likes keeping doll-like girls locked up in big magician’s chests to play with whenever he desires. It’s all pretty sick and of course you have to suspend some disbelief. But you know, we’d live in a fool’s paradise if we believed that horrors and maniacs like this don’t exist in the world.

The acting is all good but there’s no real central character that pulls it all together. It’s shot with not too many frills to make it a horror movie – The Collector is menacing enough – but the play on lighting in some scenes is pretty awesome. There’s this one scene where a light bulb is flickering on and off as Arkin is in a room and it’s like one moment you see nothing the next you see something. Awesome dude!

The Collection is perfect if you’re in the mood for some senseless, well-crafted violence that will thrill you to bits while you’re watching and you’ll completely forget it five minutes later. I say go for it.