The Collection

In the Hotel Argento, the Collector holds a new girl prisoner as a small group of  mercenaries, guided by the survivor from The Collector (2009), raid his joint, hoping to rescue her and kill the psychopath. These plans, however, don't work out so well.
****

If you thought The Collector was absurd, Whoa Nelly, are you in for a treat because The Collection ups the ante in the preposterous department big time. I love how the Saw movies gave birth to the “booby trap psycho genius” subgenre, where serial killers are death trap impresarios with a knack for setting up architectural, psychological nightmares for civilians chosen (sometimes at random, sometimes specifically) to die in the most imaginatively savage ways. I mean, the lead heroine of The Collection must watch helplessly as her bestie is crushed under this hydraulic press that squashes about fifteen people unable to escape due to being caged in all sides! This “for certain members only” dance club turns into an architectural “body mower”. Bloody bodies lie in this massive pile, legs and arms strewn all over the place, and if you were to even attempt to walk into this place you’d trip, falling right on your ass or face…probably slip on a blood pool or crash into a body heap.

I was amused at how, once again, Josh Stewart’s Arkin (who somehow survived constant torture to finally be freed…at the expense of the club crowd slaughtered) is able to move about the location, set with traps by the Collector, and stay one step ahead. I did find the ending satisfying (after all he had done to so many innocent people, the Collector will receive retaliated abuse and suffer the same afflictions of torture he once unrelentingly used on others), even as logically it was a bit contrived (could he really isolate one particular entomologist out of 13 in the city?). But the whole film (all 75 minutes of it, that is) is far-fetched and stretches credibility to its threshold, so the conclusion shouldn’t be any harder to swallow that what preceded it. I can only imagine when Arkin finally gets his hands on the Collector, an overwhelming feeling of excitement and exhilaration might reach its apex with those watching; too often, the killer is allowed to escape his deserved just desserts, but The Collection allows us to see him stuffed away in a chest, with Arkin informing him that payback’s a bitch.

The gist of the film consists of Lucello (Lee Tergesen) leading a commando team into the Hotel Argento, the very lair of the Collector, with Arkin forced into a guide role. Soon, though, the team is picked apart (butchered) by a variety of death traps. Elena (Emma Kirkpatrick) was attending the club when all hell broke loose. Elena was the one who watched her best gal-pal crushed in the press, and she’s later kidnapped by the Collector. Elena’s wealthy father, Peters (Christopher McDonald), wholly depends on Lucello to get his daughter back. The Collector is out there and the police have failed to catch him (yet, Arkin can determine where he lives not long after surviving the Hotel Argento and the Collector), so Lucello will arm himself with a machine-gun toting squadron, hoping Arkin can lead them to their killer. Emma finds a way (this is too much) using a bra strap to unlock herself from a chest, and she soon escapes. Avoiding released spiders, and escaping from a room where her chest was rested (thanks in large part to Lucello and his men breaking into the building, setting off an alarm) a series of bear traps after traveling through a crawlspace ventilation system in the hotel, Emma follows the mould of resourceful final girl. I thought her answer to rescuing Arkin from a fire trap surrounding him using a pipe against glass “aquariums” holding “human body modified art” was ingenious, providing a really cool visual. She soon meets up with those still left who haven’t found themselves caught in some grisly trap, and the plan will be to either escape from the Collector’s lair or kill him.

I couldn’t help but ponder just how the Collector could stage that mega trap in the club…wouldn’t he need help and an extended period of time to build such a contraption as the body mower? That has an elaborate design to it, with a lot of wire and gears, advancing throughout the building. This system depends entirely on Arkin’s release, too. Emma has to find the chest containing Arkin, open it, with him leaving it before the trigger sets off the complex network of the aforementioned wire and gears that jumpstarts the mechanized slaughter machine. It is astonishing and macabre; quite impressive is this opening sequence that the remainder of the movie depends on the shock value of human victims experimented on and left as mentally unstable zombies, totally lost in their madness due to drugs and the violence inflicted on them, for further impact. Seeing humans “reshaped” and presented resembling insects, their bodies modified in grotesque forms, certainly left my mouth agape. It really strengthens the point regarding the Collector’s depravity and psychopathy.

I think movies like this seem far more graphic than they really are, though. Sure, there’s human disfigurement, dead bodies turned into twisted art projects mimicking bugs and insects, and impalements/throat slicing. But a lot is implied rather than shown. It is really a trick of the brain; your mind creates all the details that are necessary. Take, for instance, the Abby character. She is quite a strange one. Treated like a doll, heavy make-up, her room basically did up like a child’s, Abby eventually helps the Collector against the last few still alive towards the end. She is rather scared, child-like, cute, and seems to conceal a lot within herself. She has survived, it seems, by being subservient and remaining loyal to her captor. It’s probably Stockholm’s at this point. Her fate, upon betraying the invaders who had found Elena and were trying to escape, is the dreaded Iron Maiden trap. We get the inside look, with all the spikes, and it closes with blood spewing out...but it isn’t all that graphic, if you really think about it.

Many would laugh a bit at my ridiculously high rating for this ludicrous film which just expects us to accept that one guy could orchestrate and concoct traps of such complexity, but, damn it, I can't help but admire the masterminds who create and unleash these elaborate inventions just for the visceral thrills that derive from all that bloodshed. We see those death traps start and finish with a domino effect that doesn't end well for folks. Sure, the problem is that because so much creative energy goes into "how to kill people" that less is forwarded to the characters and plot. Quite frankly, there's a groundwork (rich papa is in fear for his daughter's life, sends his best friend, who is his security, to fetch her; Arkin might have escaped, but he wants his vengeance; the commandos are following their leader into the madness building) and that's it: the rest is kill or be killed.

There's that Argento red loud and proud.

Like he was in The Collector (2009), the killer returns with that mask warped and deranged as his psyche, and those eyes are still quite soulless and black. If you want the killer to represent everything that is evil, the Collector has that look, with actions that certainly reflect the lurker in the darkness ready to strike.

I think a blessing for this serial killer flick is its running time. It is all "survive and advance" in this building that's a maze of traps only a few are either lucky or clever enough to escape through. It doesn't pretend to be deep, either. It has one fucked up human monster, a battle-scarred hero who has been through the unimaginable horrors (to escape a cage, while a fire is set by the Collector inside the building, flaming around them, Arkin has his arm re-broke (yikes!!!) so he can reach and move the latch; he is basically human wreckage when he finally flees the "kill club" at the beginning), having seen his way past it all to get his revenge at the conclusion, and a young woman is scrappy enough to come to the hero's rescue as flames rise and spread. The building which occupies a great deal of the film's short running time could be considered the true star. It is the epicenter of all that is living and breathing within the killer. His dark, disturbing fantasies reign supreme in the building, featuring the trophies and art carved from human flesh and molded from human bodies. It's his playhouse, his refuge, and his laboratory. What thrives within him is made manifest and those trying to get the hell out of there must bare witness to his madness. Some learn about that madness from him personally.