Trends in Hollywood tend to come and go. One year's fascination quickly gives way to another and so it is that I've found myself hoping that the horror sub-genre known as "torture porn" would hopefully give way to a return to more sophisticated story telling. Yet, while not as prevalent as it was a couple of years ago, I'm sad to say this envelope pushing trend doesn't appear to show any signs of abating.
It's all too bad, really, because many of the movies that fall into the TP category have, at their essence, really compelling stories that find themselves buried under mountains of blood, gore and entrails. The moment the maxim "what's been seen cannot be unseen" starts to compete with the plot, you know the viewer is in trouble.
The latest case in point is The Collector. Originally envisioned as a prequel to Saw, but created as a vehicle in its own right when that franchise's producers balked, this is a movie that has much more going for it than standard horror fare.
It all starts with the premise, telling the story of Arkin (Josh Stewart), a member of a contracting crew renovating a large estate owned by a jeweller. As it turns out, Arkin moonlights as a burglar and sets his sights on the family safe, where he hopes to score some gemstones and help his ex wife pay off her loan-sharks. Expecting the family to be out of town, he returns and breaks in, but while there he discovers there's another intruder skulking about whose agenda doesn't involve mere diamonds, but rather the selection and torture of humans for his "collection" and the family, which didn't leave town after all, is being held at the psycho's mercy. The result being that Arkin must bring all his skill as a burglar to bear to not only hide from The Collector, but in a novel turnabout, becomes the saviour of the captives as he attempts to rescue the very people he set out to rob.
There's a lot going on here to like, from the cat and mouse game played out between the two criminals, to Arkin's navigating the Saw-like traps that The Collector has laid in wait for the family's kids to come home, and his desperate attempts to figure out a way to thwart The Collector at his own game.
Unfortunately the film succumbs to the temptations of the genre, and Director Marcus Dunstan feels obliged to deliver the requisite scenes of gore and dismemberment, much of which is purely gratuitous and not needed given the compelling nature of the plot. While it may be too much to ask that horror films be gore free, when the camera lingers almost gleefully on hooks piercing human flesh, severed tongues and eyes being stitched shut, this is when lines start to be crossed, treading into that queasy territory of quasi-pornographic fetishism.
So this is the dilemma posed by The Collector – an above average premise that sees itself weighed down by excessive on screen baggage. Though what has been seen cannot be unseen, the film makers would have been better off remembering that the terrors the mind's imagination can conjure up from what is left unseen might well have served this film to a far better end.
It's all too bad, really, because many of the movies that fall into the TP category have, at their essence, really compelling stories that find themselves buried under mountains of blood, gore and entrails. The moment the maxim "what's been seen cannot be unseen" starts to compete with the plot, you know the viewer is in trouble.
The latest case in point is The Collector. Originally envisioned as a prequel to Saw, but created as a vehicle in its own right when that franchise's producers balked, this is a movie that has much more going for it than standard horror fare.
It all starts with the premise, telling the story of Arkin (Josh Stewart), a member of a contracting crew renovating a large estate owned by a jeweller. As it turns out, Arkin moonlights as a burglar and sets his sights on the family safe, where he hopes to score some gemstones and help his ex wife pay off her loan-sharks. Expecting the family to be out of town, he returns and breaks in, but while there he discovers there's another intruder skulking about whose agenda doesn't involve mere diamonds, but rather the selection and torture of humans for his "collection" and the family, which didn't leave town after all, is being held at the psycho's mercy. The result being that Arkin must bring all his skill as a burglar to bear to not only hide from The Collector, but in a novel turnabout, becomes the saviour of the captives as he attempts to rescue the very people he set out to rob.
There's a lot going on here to like, from the cat and mouse game played out between the two criminals, to Arkin's navigating the Saw-like traps that The Collector has laid in wait for the family's kids to come home, and his desperate attempts to figure out a way to thwart The Collector at his own game.
Unfortunately the film succumbs to the temptations of the genre, and Director Marcus Dunstan feels obliged to deliver the requisite scenes of gore and dismemberment, much of which is purely gratuitous and not needed given the compelling nature of the plot. While it may be too much to ask that horror films be gore free, when the camera lingers almost gleefully on hooks piercing human flesh, severed tongues and eyes being stitched shut, this is when lines start to be crossed, treading into that queasy territory of quasi-pornographic fetishism.
So this is the dilemma posed by The Collector – an above average premise that sees itself weighed down by excessive on screen baggage. Though what has been seen cannot be unseen, the film makers would have been better off remembering that the terrors the mind's imagination can conjure up from what is left unseen might well have served this film to a far better end.