To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes for The Collector. Speaking as a man who gave up on the Saw franchise after number two (in name and nature), I don’t have a lot of time for torture-pon grot. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still got an old vhs of The Beyond I dig out once in a while, so I’ve nothing against ridiculously gratuitous splattering. I just prefer it when it serves the plot, rather than being the plot.Still, it was a quiet Friday and I’d managed to blag free tickets, so I figured I’d check it out – and I’m actually glad I did.
Director Dunstan worked alongside writer Patrick Melton on the aforementioned Saw franchise, as well as the ludicrous/idiotic Feast films, but here they manage to break away from by-the-numbers splatter and actually tie-in some serious questions aboout the nature of evil.
Josh Stewart is Arkin, a debt-ridden cat burglar breaking into an isolated and seemingly deserted house. But what’s this? That’s right readers! It isn’t deserted at all. The family who live there have been tied up about the place, and the perpetrator (Juan Fernández in full Leatherface mode) has set a series of bizarre, jigsaw-esque traps about the place. Hey -it could happen to anyone.
Credulity aside, it does open up a barrel of interesting moral worms, Arkin torn between the needs to rob, run or help the victims, and his internal conflict does wonders to spice up the otherwise overused home-invasion macguffin. And while the ‘torturous traps bit has been similarly overdone, there’s still enough invention on show here to provide some decent seat-jump moments (watch out for those bear-traps!).
...he knows when you've been sleeping..he knows when you're awake...
Combining two highly overused horror tropes and chucking in a stock loony in a bad mask shouldn’t work at all, but by cutting out any flab from the script and choosing to focus on the emotional dilemma as much as the flesh-ripping, the Collector drags itself out of the hostel for used gorno to take it’s rightful place as a lean and very mean chop-job.
2009 may well be remembered as the year of the apocalypse – cinematically at least, and despite strong (not to mention patently ridiculous) bids from Zombieland and 2012, The Road is the literary pinnacle of the years filmic lust for devastation. Based on a Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer winning novel, Proposition director Hillcoat has a stellar cast, and manages to pull off a literate, messagey Sci-Fi meltdown without ever coming across as portentous or overblown.
Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx team up for some credibility ruining violent nonsense.
While we try to give balanced reviews here at STS, fuck me this is nasty. While a bit of the old ultra-violence is to be expected in a revenge thriller, it needs to be handled carefully if you want to avoid your anti-hero becoming the villain. Here, Butler’s general blandness makes him difficult to root for, meaning he’s on thin ice from the get go, and his subsequent actions end up confusing who exactly your supposed to back.
Generally, we watch any old crap round here – in the interest of being a representative, even-handed site obviously – from Marley & Me to Apocalypse Now,it’s all fair grist to the review grinder-yep,we even sat through Troll 2 once.
But just occasionally there are some movie crimes so cynical and heinous in their deployment that we’re robbed of even the enjoyment bought by bright shapes moving around a large screen.
Twilight: New Moon is one of them…
Ah Roland Emmerich, where would we be without you? Along with Michael Bay, Emmerich is almost totally responsible for sucking anything even resembling plots out of Summer Tentpole movies over the last few years. In the case of transformers, at least Bay had an excuse-he wants to flog you toys – so it’s hard to work out why grumble like this ever gets greenlit. One can only assume that Hollywood junior execs are now so young they’ve never seen Ghostbusters, and actually think this is a real movie.
