He's Certainly Not Home Alone
Having done time, Arkin (Josh Stewart) is trying to go straight as a handyman, the trouble is he owes his ex money and she is putting the pressure on him to pay up. Despite being treated well by the family he has been working for he decides to return to their remote home late one night expecting them to have left for a two week vacation so that he can steal some jewellery. What he didn't expect to find is the family trapped inside as the house has been rigged by a psycho with all manner of torture devices. With his first instinct is to get out of there Arkin then decides to stay to try and help the family only to end up involved in the sickoes sadistic games.
First things first I should mention that I watched the sequel to "The Collector", "The Collection", first, it was just how things went but the movies work as individual entities and so watching the second one first doesn't spoil the experience of "The Collector". And secondly you have to go with "The Collector" for a while as to start with it doesn't feel like it is going anywhere, that is until Arkin returns to the house and lets just say if Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister turned psycho he could quite easily have turned into The Collector with his series of wires, traps and seriously cruel punishments.
The thing is that whilst "The Collector" starts a little slow it is needed because in those opening scenes it manages to give us enough detail about Arkin to make what follows work. We learn that he has done time, he loves his daughter but is under pressure to pay his ex-wife money and that is all it takes to make his actions reasonably believable especially when we also see that he bonded with the families youngest daughter whilst working on the place during the day.
Of course the big thing about "The Collector" is that it is a torture movie featuring the writing and directing talents of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan whose names may be familiar to some from their work on the latter "Saw" movies. And yes "The Collector" is one of those movies so full of gory acts that for some there will be scenes where they will turn away. But again it is one of those movies which is creative if far fetched in the horror stakes and even if it goes too far for some its ingenuity is kind of impressive.
What this all boils down to is that "The Collector" is very much a movie for those who enjoy watching horror movies which are heavy on torture aspects. But it has more going on that just one scene of violence and gore after another with a surprisingly decent storyline as the vehicle.
