EPTWatching some streams in the last few weeks, I sometimes got an ad for a movie called "The Collection." Learning that this was a sequel, I went and watched the first one. Whoops.
The Bare Bones
“Arkin” is presumably an ex-con, now window installing guy or something. He goes to steal a diamond from a house he was working in because he needed money for his idiot ex-wife. When he’s in the house, traps magically appear all around him and then we spend about an hour watching things get stabbed, cut, or otherwise killed. Eventually the family’s young daughter Hannah is the only one to escape and Arkin is captured and put into a box. Yes a box. Then the movie ends because fuck it.
The Stupid
Traps
There’s a ridiculous amount of traps of various sorts in the house. One room has the floor covered in acid that can burn and melt flesh and shoes (also cats) but literally nothing else. Another room has bear traps, not a bear trap but about 20. I think this is done to establish the villain as very careful and meticulous, preparing for the event of a grizzly bear militia coming to save the day (which would actually be much more effective than the police force, more on that later). Most notable are the knives, razor blades, and other pointy things attached to literally everything you could possibly attach pointy things to, such as stairs or windows. A window falls on a cat and cuts it in half. As the old Sun Tzu proverb goes: “What’s scarier than a black cat? Half a black cat! Also it’s, like, covered in acid or something."
The other problem with the traps is that they just kinda appeared for some reason. When Arkin first enters the house, he walked straight upstairs to the master bedroom where the diamond was to be found. He got there entirely without issue and never saw a trap. Considering the amount of traps we would see later, he definitely would have seen something if they were already up. Granted, we already know the bad guy has been in the house for some time since he’s beaten the father, restrained the mother, and stuck a box with an contextless old dude in it off in some closet (yeah). So maybe some of the traps were already there when Arkin arrived, but most weren’t.
Plot
i) The Diamond - The whole reason Arkin is in this house is to steal a diamond. His shitty ex-wife needs money because she owes loan sharks. After Arkin receives his pay cheque in the beginning, he gives her the money. But he didn’t get as much as he expected (even though he was given extra) so he can’t cover the whole debt. Let’s ignore how he grossly over-estimated his pay to the point that he needs a giant diamond to cover the difference. It’s unclear exactly how many tens of thousands of dollars he expected to get paid for installing windows, but that’s not my concern. The problem is that the driving force for the whole plot is never addressed again. Granted, towards the end when Arkin thinks he’s getting away and realizes he still has the diamond, he asks the paramedic to call his wife. But then he doesn’t get away afterall and we have no idea what happens to his wife and daughter. Were they hurt or killed? Was the daughter sold to the Teletubby industry? Was his asshole wife just lying about owing loan sharks? We have no idea.
ii) The “Wtf is Actually Happening - A funny thing happens where it’s never made clear exactly what’s going on. In the somewhat similar Saw series (alliteration!) for example, the bad guy is upset that he’s dying so he tortures people who don’t appreciate life. There they at least tried to offer an explanation about what was happening. The Collector does no such thing. The closest we come is a scene with the contextless old guy in a box I alluded to earlier. In fairness, he’s not entirely without context. The movie opened with a scene where this man returns home with his wife, finds a mysterious box in his house (the same box he’s in now), opens it to presumably find a person, then gets attacked. Why is he now in the box, and why is the box in this house? Don’t worry, it’s all part of his upcoming ‘explanation.’
Old Man tells Arkin that the villain “collects people” and that he kills the ones he doesn’t want, but “always keeps one.” The problem here is that it raises way more questions than it answers:
- What does “collecting people” actually mean?
- Does he trade them with other collectors?
- Are there other collectors? If not, what’s the point?
- Where does he keep all these people?
- How does he keep them? All in these red boxes?
- How many hit points does Arkin have? Any special abilities?
- What does he actually do with them?
- But sup with the traps?
And why is the old guy in the box? “I’m the bait,” he says. Considering the beginning where the old man gets attacked while looking at someone in the box, I’ll assume he means it’s done as a distraction to get the next family. I just can’t help but feel there exists easier distractions. Just off the top of my head:
- The giant red box that clearly doesn’t belong, but without a person in it
- Hired strippers
- Half a cat
- A little mechanical monkey that claps cymbals together
- An actual monkey that claps cymbals together
- A freaking murderer
The Funnies
So that’s enough whining for now. Sure there’s a number of plot holes and glaring oversights, but it’s a movie about pointy things being jammed into people so we’ve come to expect that. Let’s just quickly rattle off a few things I found funny.
- When Arkin finds the wife/mother of the family bound in a bathtub, she tells him she “prepared for rape or robbery, but not this.” I’m not sure which is the more pertinent question: “What does ‘prepared for rape’ actually mean?” or “Why did those preparations not include calling the police?”
- Arkin is clearly invincible and never going to run out of blood. A normal person would have died no less than four times throughout the movie. Also his clearly limitless reservoir of blood begs the question: Why steal diamonds when you can just moonlight as an all-you-can-eat buffet for vampires?
- I got an idea for a sick new pickup line. It wasn’t directly used in the movie (unfortunately) but totally could have been. “My hand is bleeding really badly, I’m gonna need your panties.”
- The first police officer is really bad at his job. He sees bodied and traps but doesn’t think to call for backup right away. Soon after, he had his gun drawn and pointed at the bad guy, who dropped his weapon. But then a dog came and killed the police officer somehow. Granted, it was a big mean dog, but I’ve heard guns are really effective against those.
- Towards the end, Arkin has been captured and the little girl Hannah is the only one left. While torturing Arkin, the bad guy sees Hannah who is presumably the one he originally wanted to collect (I heard she works great in certain decks). He starts to approach her and Arkin goes full-out Xbox Live on him to try to save Hannah. “Fucking faggot bitch!” he yells repeatedly. It totally works.
- Hannah and Arkin ultimately escape by lighting a dog on fire or something. PETA must love this movie.
- Finally the police save Hannah and Arkin. But continuing their trend of sucking at their jobs, they promptly un-save Arkin when his entirely unprotected ambulance is rammed off the road by an exterminator truck. Note that the police were aware the bad guy was an exterminator by this point, and also that he was out there somewhere nearby. They probably could have paid a bit more attention.
- Watch The Collector. (Get it? I’m just making jokes? Bam.)
