‘The Collector’ *
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck must be so proud. Their reality TV competition to give movie careers to worthy filmmakers-in-training rewarded writer-director Marcus Dunstan and co-writer Patrick Melton. Their beast feature “Feast” spun directly out of “Project Greenlight”
And what did they do with their newfound film careers? They’ve written “Saw” sequels. And they’ve written and directed an even more soulless slice of torture porn, “The Collector,” about a masked monster who butchers households full of people with booby traps, sparing one victim’s life for his “collection.”
“The Collector” gives us Arkin, an ex-con safecracker (Josh Stewart) who needs to rob the rural Louisiana mansion he has just finished installing locks on to save his woman and their little girl from murderous loan sharks. But once he breaks into a house he thinks is empty, he discovers it’s got all these tripwires, guillotines and bear traps. In an absurd few short hours, “The Collector” has busted in and been busy, busy, busy, installing room upon room of deadly contraptions.
Arkin faces the moral dilemma of finishing his burglary and saving his own skin, or trying to save the family that employed him. They’re prisoners inside their own home — bloodied and doomed if Arkin doesn’t make the right choice.
The killer has no motivation. The hero’s quest has no visual urgency. Still, the script has bits of clever dialogue — Arkin’s fence puts him in his place: “We’ve got a routine. I pick the jobs; you pick the locks.”
The editing and camerawork are self-consciously stylish, as if to say, “We’re better than this.”
But the human and moral components are shortchanged. We see victims meet undeserving fates and deathtraps that aren’t as inventive as the ones in “Saw.” And there’s the strip-club scene that screams “sleazeball filmmaker.”
“Project Greenlight” should have found some way to weed out bottom feeders such as Dunstan and Melton. There are plenty of torture-porn cretins already making movies. When you pick guys who only want to film entrails, you really have set the bar too low.
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MPAA rating: R (for pervasive sadistic bloody violence, language and some sexuality/nudity).
Running time: 1:28.
Starring: Josh Stewart (Arkin); Michael Reilly Burke (Michael); Andrea Roth (Victoria); Madeline Zima (Jill)
A Freestyle Releasing release. Directed by Marcus Dunstan.
Written by Dunstan and Patrick Melton. Produced by Brett Forbes, Julie Richardson and Patrick Rizzotti.
