The Collector

After winning Project Greenlight 3 and having their script, FEAST produced by Dimension Films screen writing duo Patrick Felton and Marcus Dunst quickly became the go to guys for horror features jumping on to the SAW franchise steam train as well as finishing their own FEAST trilogy and doctoring scripts for the likes of MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D. Dunst makes a move into the directors chair for THE COLLECTOR.

Looking to score an expensive jewel and settle his estranged wife's loan shark debt Arkin (Josh Stewart) breaks into the home of the family where he has been carrying out construction work. Already in the house is a masked man who has tied the family up in various improvised torture chambers and rigged the house with an assortment of booby-traps. Arkin is caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse against the masked man and his contraptions.

The script was conceived during Dunst and Felton's pitch for the SAW series as a proposed prequel, a few adjustments later and it became MIDNIGHT MAN and latterly THE COLLECTOR. The trap orientated plot will certainly be familiar to fans of the work of John "Jigsaw" Kramer but this film is a lot meaner, if that is possible, and is unforgiving to its characters. Dunst's direction takes a startling lead from giallo slashers with contrasting colours and outright brutal violence. The traps idea may be a little contrived and stretch believability but this is entertainment, not true life and as a result this is a thrilling and gritty movie, a refreshing, vitalizing jolt to the torture/home invasion sub-genre and the best to come from US shores for many a year. It practically screams for a sequel but that is an inherant factor of the horror plot; evil going unpunished, and Felton and Dunst have already spoken on various internet interviews of taking THE COLLECTOR in an intriguing action orientated direction.

The movie has been crippled by distribution problems once the Weinstein's were unable to provide proper support so it has got a little lost in the shuffle, seek it out in a DVD store now.

Total hard on and ejaculation!