The Collection features the Collector (Randall Archer) super-smart, super-rich, super-capable killer (he has to be all of these things to do what he does). His schtick is that he kills lots of people in "creative" ways, mutilates others (he wants to create insects out of human body parts), creates elaborate traps, creates vicious drug zombies...all because he is an insane entomologist. Is there another kind? Anyway, Arkin O'Brien (Josh Stewart) is the only person to escape his clutches (which I assume is the story told in the first film, The Collector). He is "recruited" (i.e., forced) by a team of mercenaries led by Lucello (Lee Tergesen) to lead them to the collector's lair. They have been hired to recover Elena Peters (Emma Fitzpatrick). She is the only survivor of a massacre at a rave (which is the opening set-piece), in which the Collector rigs up traps that kill hundreds of people. The team finds the Collector's hiding place (an abandoned hotel) that has been turned into a maze of death. Bloody mayhem ensues, leaving only Arkin and Elena alive. Arkin tracks the Collector to his home - although the film cheats; there is simply no way the Collector could have escaped the fate we see befall him; Arkin sets him on fire and the building he is trapped in explodes. Arkin captures the Collector, presumably to torture and kill him. The end.
I'll start with the good. The movie looks nice. The camera work is competent, the effects are okay, and the sound construction is well done. Also, final girl Elena is easy on the eyes and has screen charisma. When she is on-screen, the film gets a little bit livelier. But, that's it.
Many of the scene set-ups are visual cliches. In particular, the rave scene looks like a director's audition reel for a music video gig. The story is an implausible Saw copy and the Saw movies are implausible to begin with. The Collector has the resources to turn a hotel (the Hotel Argento...which made me want to watch Suspira a much better movie) into a murder factory and no one notices. He can create a nightclub of death, complete with a ceiling mounted wheat thresher, and no one notices. How does he do this? Does he do all the work himself? Does he hire people? Because the kills and the apparatus used in them are so outlandish, these questions are reasonable.
Cinema is replete with killer who do things that require a suspension of disbelief (e.g., Hannibal Lector, John from Se7en, Mike Meyers from Halloween), but we can accept them. Why? For a few reasons. First, they are vaguely plausible. John's kills in Se7en, while elaborate, mostly take patience and the right environment, one in which no one cares what goes on around them, which is a central theme of the film. Which leads into the second reason, the story is powerful enough that we don't care if plot elements stretch plausibility. This is what allows us to overlook the more outlandish aspects of a movie like Silence of the Lambs. Specifically, Hannibal Lector somehow creates a butterfly tableau using a dead police officer in the space of a few minutes. This makes little sense; but the story, acting and images are so powerful that the viewer is carried through moments that in a lesser film would be problematic. Finally, there can be an element of the supernatural. Mike Meyers in the original Halloween is initially just a psychopath. As the film progresses, it is clear he is something more than that. What is never defined in the original film (except when Loomis (Donald Pleasance) says he is the "bogeyman"), but he is shown to be impervious to lethal injuries and has an uncanny ability to appear and disappear from a scene. The supernatural aspects are built up over the course of the film, which is one reason why they work so well. By the end of the movie, when Loomis looks at where Mike was lying, seemingly dead, and the body is gone, the viewer buys it.
None of this applies to this dull collection of murders, torture and grotesque images. It is hard to judge the actors, since their characters are so poorly drawn. They do aggressively stupid things (like not notifying the cops when they find the killer's lair), although, since we have few insights into how they think, maybe they are supposed to be dumb. The team of mercs is so poorly conceived that I don't even think they were all given names. The Collector has no personality and no motive, beyond the obvious "I like killing people." There is no tension in the film and Stewart makes for a weak lead. While there could have been an interesting story, focusing on Elena's attempt to escape, the plotline following Arkin and the mercs is a pointless distraction. While the film looks good, if you are not telling a story or creating a compelling character study, then you are just wasting film.
And that's what The Collection. A waste of film...and my time.
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