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.
With Sean “Y’bloody bastards’ Bean in full knight’s regalia and ‘Severance’ man Christopher Smith in the directors chair, you’d be forgiven for expecting a ridiculously gory horror that doesn’t take it’s historical trappings too seriously. Rather than following in the thoroughly ridiculous footsteps of ‘Soloman Kane’ however, Smith seems to have taken a conscious decision to continue the expressive expansion he began in Triangle, resulting in a film that isn’t afraid to play the stupid seriously, and it’s all the better for it.
Hollywood loves a good horror film, they always have. From films based on real life murders to alien invasions everyone loves to be scared in one way or another. However the recent slew of bad sequels and even worse remakes is a very new phenomenon and Hollywood appears to be doing rather well from these shambolic films as people flock to see a safe horror film.
While new to the mainstream these dodgy horror films have always been there dwelling in the sewers of the million dollar studios used to create the a-list movies you love, these are the b-movies and this is their time.
B-movies are cheap, badly made, unrealistic, jumpy, and at times very funny. I credit one man with the return of the b-movie and while it may have been slow he’s brought it into the main stream without you even realising it. His name is Sam Raimi. Yes I know he made Spiderman, Spiderman 2, and the shocking Spiderman 3, but look at the terrible humour in that, it’s all b-movie….
Politics, elections, proportional representation, yadda yadda yadda…
Let’s lighten things up shall we? Let’s talk about a child sex killer who gets burnt to death, and then haunts his former prey, slashing them to bits in their dreams, shall we?
That’s right, Freddy Kruger’s back. Again. The remake/re-boot/’re-imagining’ of A Nightmare On Elm Street is here and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. Apart from watch it (or ignore it).
Before we start, let’s just imagine that Frederick Krudger were real. Wouldn’t he just be the Daily Mail’s ultimate wet dream? Not only is our man a paedophile, he is also quite possiblly an immigrant paedophile (check out his surname…). The worst kind, eh Daily Mail?!
Slashing The Seats was granted access to the exclusive premiere of the film last night in London’s glitzy West End, walking down the red carpet and mixing with such stars and luminaries as Sir Anthony Hopkins, George Clooney and Dame Helen Mirren.
Time to welcome Neil Marshall back from the post-apocalyptic hinterlands of Scotland for his latest, a…erm…post-apocalyptic* adventure set in Scotland…
