The Collector

Name: The Collector
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Crime
Released: July 31, 2009
Duration: 90 min
Rating: 29
Cast: Andrea Roth, Josh Stewart, Juan Fernández

2009

METASCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 109 Ratings

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6.5

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 109 Ratings

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The Collector

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Movie Details & Credits

Freestyle Releasing | Release Date: July 31, 2009 | R

Starring: Andrea Roth, Josh Stewart, Juan Fernández

Summary: For handyman and ex-con Arkin, a quiet home and a family on vacation is an “opportunity”. For inside the house lies a jeweler’s safe, and inside the safe is a gem – his only hope for repaying a debt to his ex-wife and keeping what’s left of his family intact. Unfortunately for Arkin, inside the house is also a box containing the latestFor handyman and ex-con Arkin, a quiet home and a family on vacation is an “opportunity”. For inside the house lies a jeweler’s safe, and inside the safe is a gem – his only hope for repaying a debt to his ex-wife and keeping what’s left of his family intact. Unfortunately for Arkin, inside the house is also a box containing the latest addition to a collection catalogued in blood, bone and tears. As the seconds tick down to midnight, Arkin becomes a reluctant hero trapped by a masked “Collector” in a maze of lethal invention. (Freestyle Releasing)… Expand

Director: Marcus Dunstan

Genre(s): Thriller, Horror, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 90 min

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Critic Reviews

John Anderson

With both feet planted firmly on the sticky accelerator of the torture-porn vehicle, The Collector is a surprisingly stylish and confident high-concept thriller. Read full review

Chuck Wilson

Making his directorial debut, Dunstan displays a knack for building suspense. And yet, weirdly, amidst all the requisite blood spray, one senses a reluctance on the filmmaker’s part to linger lovingly over the pierced skins and protruding entrails of the killer’s various victims. Read full review

Michael Ordona

Either you go for this sort of extreme, senseless gore or you don't. With its plot and lead performance, The Collector is, at least, an unusual specimen. Read full review

Staff (Not credited)

As the seconds tick down to midnight, Arkin becomes a reluctant hero trapped by a masked Collector in a maze of lethal invention--the Spanish Inquisition as imagined by Rube Goldberg--while trying to rescue the very family he came to rob. Read full review

Marc Savlov

The Collector feels like the final, welcome nail in the bizarrely popular torture-porn coffin. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

The result is a sub-"Saw" knockoff that manages to be brutal yet monotonous, not to mention monstrously unpleasant. Read full review

Wesley Morris

Another helping of egregious slicing and slashing. Read full review

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User Reviews

Nicholasandrew

Jun 11, 2012

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This movie is awesome, until the part that it becomes a JASON'S movie... Because its made with very creativity, but in fact it's only a common movie... Don't watch, but if you want to watch. Just stop the movie remaining 3 minutes to finish, in the part when the victim is in the ambulance's car… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

robertashfield

Sep 17, 2012

Brilliant

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

DJohnson

Jul 13, 2012

This is a seriously underrated film, relatively original, well cast, creepy, and with a few shocking moments, the collector is pretty much the promised land for all die-hard horror fans, myself included.

3 of 4 users found this helpful31

RealisticRage

Oct 3, 2016

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Unlike its sequel, which thrived off of jump scares, The Collector is less of a standard slasher film and more of a mix of suspense thriller and psychological horror. Protagonist Arkin O'Brian, handyman and ex-con, is a better protagonist than most of the standard heroes of horror films today. While the movie itself is flawed, Josh Stewart is able to balance both the toughness and terror embodied by Arkin. He's less of Sam Raimi's Ash Williams and more of Wes Craven's Nancy Thompson. Fernandez as the Collector is downright terrifying. The being he plays is evil incarnate, and he legitimately terrifies me, a rare feat a horror movie can achieve for me nowadays. The Collector himself is a sick, twisted man who shows himself off with euphoric grace as he tortures and murders through most of the main cast. Not a guy you wanna meet in a dark alley at any point in your life. Despite the lead's excellent performances and the excellent building of suspense, this movie is bogged down by a couple of things. First is the youngest child, Hannah. The character is obviously introduced as the standard "immortal adolescent" trope. The only real involvement she has in the film is to be the object of Arkin's moral conflict within the film, but beyond that, her performance comes off as forced for the brief time she is introduced in the beginning. Second is the rest of the family and their decisions within the film. You know they're gonna die, and through the use of stupid decisions. The mother and teenage daughter both obviously panic and scream, then die. It's enough to make you groan from the staleness of the concept. And finally... the cop. As soon as he shows up, the only thing you can wonder is "How's he gonna die?" That aside, the movie's ending fight is both chilling and satisfactory. Seeing Arkin beat on him and kick him down the basement stairs is thrilling, mostly from the rarity of seeing a protagonist in a horror film beat a villain in a straight-up fight is a treat we don't get often as an audience. In closing, despite its flaws, The Collector is a satisfying horror-thriller that surges with adrenaline and tension, superior to the more popular Saw films. Newer horror flicks should follow its example.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

imthenoob

Sep 29, 2012

Stewart does a great job as the lead and The Collector, as a character, holds a lot of potential. What takes away from the movie is that there is too much of a focus on gore rather than letting the suspense and tension build. Let it be this cat and mouse game and use the horror afterwards.Stewart does a great job as the lead and The Collector, as a character, holds a lot of potential. What takes away from the movie is that there is too much of a focus on gore rather than letting the suspense and tension build. Let it be this cat and mouse game and use the horror afterwards. That would have made it a much better film.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

pauls

Aug 1, 2009

Boring, not a good movie at all.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

ChadS.

Aug 1, 2009

David Fincher's "Zodiac" was about killing... and investigative reporting. Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" was about killing...and women in the FBI. That's what makes a film like "The Collector" so tedious, it's just about killing(at least Tobe Hooper had David Fincher's "Zodiac" was about killing... and investigative reporting. Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" was about killing...and women in the FBI. That's what makes a film like "The Collector" so tedious, it's just about killing(at least Tobe Hooper had hillbillies for local color), and even worse, the aesthetics of killing(at least Wes Craven had Ingmar Bergman's aesthetics to riff off of). So if you're a purist when it comes to killing, but found the murders in the "Saw" series too baroque, rest assured, this latest entry in the "torture porn" subgenre has traps, just traps, not puzzles. Thanks for the homage to filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, but no thanks, was my reaction to the scene where a cat is murdered, which may be an unfortunate reference to the cat burglars played by Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief", who at one point, are in the same house, doing the same job. "The Collector" updates Hitchcock's atypically breezy film by replacing one of the thieves with a psychopathic killer, a home invader with pitch black pizazz. It's a staycation for Michael(Michael Reilly Burke) and Hannah(Karley Collins), who never did make it to the airport, to the burglar's surprise, nor to the end of the movie, to absolutely nobody's surprise. Badly bloodied and badly predisposed, the traps aren't for the adults(including Arkin, the unexpected guest); the traps are for the two daughters, because moviegoers love to see bloodied females without their tops or their heartbeats. As Jill(Madeline Lima) and her boyfriend do what teenagers do best in slasher pics(which is die in the most grisly fashion possible after some form of copulation), the moviegoer realizes that the other daughter, the small girl, could easily have been the one to be impaled on a wall, or be mutilated by bear traps. The potential for this little girl's violent death is what's ultimately off-putting about "The Collector", a film about killing, plain and simple.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful

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100	#100 Most Discussed Movie of 2009
53	#53 Most Shared Movie of 2009