Movie review: 'The Collection' - not for the faint-hearted

Film: "The Collection"; Actors: Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Christopher McDonald and Lee Tergeson; Director: Marcus Dunstan; Rating: *1/2

This film is not for the faint-hearted, but for horror lovers who can digest stomach curdling and brutal mindless killings. It is about killing and torturing as many people as possible in the most brutal, graphic and pointlessly violent ways possible.

From the makers of "Saw" and "The Collector", "The Collection" is actually a sequel to these films. But "The Collection" is not really a film that solely depends on knowledge from the previous films.

For the uninitiated: Masquerading with a large black-leather-mask, the psychopath has a passion for torture and murder. He is The Collector. A guy who literally collects his victims, throws them into a red trunk, brings them home, slices them, dices them, sews them back together, pumps them full of drugs, keeps them in cages, chases them and often keeps the results suspended in large fish tanks.

Though "The Collection" has a similar setup of a trap house and all, this time it is more exciting as majority of the action is placed inside the hideout of the collector, which turns the film into more of a funhouse of horror traps and grizzly images, flipping the series on its head. It may or may not be worth your time, but it is a mean, lean, horror flick that keeps you hooked.

The film is set in a town from where many residents have gone missing. But there are a few crazy kids who won't let fear drag down their spirit of fun. One of those kids includes Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), the daughter of a wealthy man named Mr. Peters (Christopher McDonald). Emma and her friends jam up for a rave at an old abandoned hotel located in the secluded section of the town.

This is the Collector's Den, a booby-trapped killing resort. The Collector has turned this abandoned hotel into one giant killing machine, where he traps the patrons and kills just about all of them using various torture mechanisms.

Here Elena accidentally finds the box Arkin (Josh Stewart) was being kept in as everyone who is still dancing is massacred by The Collector. Arkin barely escapes with his life, but is soon ambushed by Lucello (Lee Tergeson) and his men who work for Elena's father. Lucello only has a certain span of time before Elena dies and Arkin is the only one who knows how to save her - that is the crux of the story.

It's not that everything works in favour of "The Collection". While the gore continues to be the highlight, the spectacular traps that no man would be able to pull off on his own even if he had two or three lifetimes to do it are just out of control. There are few story elements that are introduced without real payoff or even heavy influence on subsequent plot points. Also, some of the more 'shock value' specimens in the killer's museum are silly to the point of distraction.

To add to the torture, there problems in the editing of the film: there is static sound in the beginning, blurry images of a gruesome murder and TV news reporting the incident. Also, during the narration, there are times in the scene where the legs and upper torso were out of sync with the camera angle, creating confusion for viewers.

In a nutshell, "The Collection" is brainless, inconsistent, and the narration is riddled with gaping holes. It offers gore in tonnes. Watch if you love slasher porn, there is absolutely nothing else to enjoy in this film.