Strictly for auds who enjoy the grisly Grand Guignol spectacle of the Saw franchise but could do without the moral lectures and melodramatic mythology, The Collection is an energetic but utterly weightless exercise in slice-and-dice cinema. This sequel to 2009 chiller The Collector is in many ways bigger (more characters, more locations, more carnage), but in no way better than its predecessor. Theatrical is merely a pit-stop on the road to home viewing for a product with niche appeal even among horror buffs.
Picking up where The Collector left off, The Collection establishes an anonymous urban locale terrorized by a psycho killer with no method to his madness. Without the luxury of the first film's slow-burn opening act, the sequel leans on pre-existing iconography to build tension: the Collector's black mask obscuring everything but his beady eyes and predatory mouth; the red trunk he uses to "collect" a lone survivor of each massacre; an ominous tripwire connected to something sharp and lethal. Once filmmakers (and Saw sequel alums) Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton hurriedly introduce new protagonist Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick), it's off to the races for nonstop, nonsensical brutality.
Elena and pals head to a secret underground club (the password is "nevermore," natch) where the Collector waits in the shadows with a plan to orchestrate mass murder. In what should be one of the film's standout setpieces, dozens of clubgoers are simultaneously slaughtered by a massive combine-harvester blade rigged to descend from the ceiling. But the sequence is little more than a jumble of frenetically cut-together closeups, and the first of many examples of the film's "more is more" philosophy coming into conflict with the constraints of a low budget.
While Elena is dragged off to the villain's secret lair, the pic reintroduces the…
April Scott Arielle Kebbel Ashanti Ashlee Simpson Ashley Greene Ashley Olsen Ashley Scott
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