If the film’s weekend box office is a fair indication, then hardly anyone knew that The Collector opened this past weekend. The presence was there on the idiot-box-commercial-break front, but, other than the additional/standard horror website love, that’s all. Only $3,576 was made over the Friday-to-Sunday haul, so it’s pretty much a lock that The Collector will be out of theaters before you can even say “Saw ripoff.”
At least that’s what the lames who criticize films based solely off of marketing campaigns are most likely saying about this, the directing debut from Marcus Dunstan (co-writer of Feast and the most recent pair of dismissable Saw flicks) that’s actually not as bad as one might think. In fact, The Collector is gift-wrapped prize for horror geeks, loaded with inventive kills and a suffocating atmosphere of pretty slick tension. It’s highly flawed, though, so I won’t venture to say that it’s a great work of horror, but it serves its purpose quite reasonably.
I’ve given The Collector the old review-go-round over at Critic’s Notebook. Give it a gander if you have kill-able time:
Link: Critic’s Notebook review: THE COLLECTOR
THEATER OF MINE 