The writers of Saw are extremely talented and the story concept of this movie has potential to be one of the scariest movies ever constructed. Once I heard about the concept of this movie, I got excited. It has a lot of potential to be a classic. Think about it. A man enters a house to steal from the residents of the home when he finds that the resident family is beginning to be tortured, and set up to be tortured furthermore. What will the thief do? Try and save them or get killed? Will the villain be revealed and express why he is doing this to them? Is there some type of alternate story or subplot? Is the villain a family member? The film raises many questions.
However, for me, "The Collector" missed the mark on many levels. After leaving the movie, my girlfriend did not know exactly how she felt about the movie, but said that the scariest part of the movie was, of all things, the music. And she probably was right. The sounds and music of the movie established a really scary canvas for the plot to unveil. However, when constructing a movie, I'm not sure if you want people to leave saying,"Well, at least the music was really scary."
The story portrays a shady man in a bad position, looking to rob a family of their jewel, that will relieve him of his financial and familial problems. He deals with some shady characters and it is not understood why he is under all this unwanted pressure for, but the mother of child acts very standoffish towards him and only asks him for money. The plot is very bare. You find out very little about the family, the villain or the thief, and are forced to watch the movie wondering why is all this taking place, and who are these characters? Some people don't care, but personally, I would have liked to see the connection between the characters in the film, yes, even the demented torturous murderer.
Once the thief enters the home he plans to rob and begins to try and navigate his way to steal the jewel, he realizes that he is not the only one in the house and that the house is set up to provide torture to the resident family. Therefore, thief becomes hero in a matter of seconds and the thief chooses to try and help the family and save who he can.
The story lends itself to a lot of suspense, however, the shooting of the movie was very confusing and dark, and therefore detracted from the suspense. On numerous occasions during the movie, I was perturbed as to what was going on. Once activated, the traps are so fast, you don't truly understand what took place, but see the end result, which more times than not is the gruesome and painful death of one of the family members. There are instances when you are wondering how this was set up, what occurred and how the girl ends up nailed to a wall, pulled by a contraption of levers, pulleys and string.
The movie moves fairly quickly, and probably the most engaging parts of the movie are unfortunately the beginning and the ending. The rest of the movie is fairly predictable.
The villain's character is well portrayed. You can tell that he is deformed, and the eyes of the villain can send chills down your spine. Not to mention, the villain is incredibly smart-almost unbelievably smart. In one scene, the thief and the youngest member of the family escape into a room, and set up a trap to electrocute the villain. The villain somehow sees the ambush coming, throws a dead body into the water that has a electric current and continues to pursue the two. How the villain knew that they would push over the fish tank and throw a tv into the water to try and electrocute him is mind-boggling to me especially in the heat of an extravagant chase. He has almost superhuman strength, knocking out the man, almost at will. Without giving away too much of the movie, it is safe to say that the villain eventually gets what he wants minus the younger member of the family.
Out of five stars, I give the movie, two. The movie's intent is to scare you and to provide suspense at the expense of a well-developed plot or characters. The shooting of the movie is dark, the norm for a horror film, but so dark that it disorients the audience. Good try, but the movie industry,especially the writers of Saw, need to understand that scary movies have advanced and therefore their audience is more sophisticated. A few cheap scare tactics and gory scenes will no longer cut it Hollywood.
