LITERAL REMAINS

Ex-convict Arkin works as a handyman wherever he can find a job.  Currently it’s for a somewhat wealthy family renovating their isolated country house.  Working their with the carpenters, exterminators, and other tradesmen, Arkin gets to know the family, and some things about the family.  Their youngest daughter, Hannah, reminds him of his own little girl; their oldest daughter, Jill, well, she just flaunts her stuff all in his face.  Mom and dad (Victoria and Michael, respectively), they just argue with their Jailbait Jill.

Arkin seems to daydream a lot while working, staring off at nothing, sometimes at spiders, sometimes at hornets.  Maybe he’s just thinking of seeing his wife, Lisa, and his daughter, Cindy.  Or maybe he just dreams of a life that doesn’t so much resemble hell, who knows.  Things with his wife aren’t that great.  When he meets Lisa at her bowling alley job, she is planning to run off with their daughter because she owes money to a loan shark.  And, hold on, they don’t have all the money.  Luckily, ex-convict Arkin was a safe cracker, and his crime boss is willing to pay big bucks for the jewels housed, oddly enough, in Victoria and Michael’s wall safe.  Lucky for Arkin that Victoria and Michael are going out of town with the kids.

All’s well that ends well.

Except things don’t go so smoothly for Arkin when he returns to the country house to steal the jewels.  The Collector has taken the family hostage, torturing them in the basement and setting deadly traps throughout the house.  So Arkin becomes trapped in the house with a serial killer.  Two floors, a basement, a laundry chute, doors everywhere, and an attack dog chained in the front yard-  it’s going to be a hell of a jewel heist.

The Collector is an okay movie, but somewhere within it lies a better movie waiting to be made, waiting to break free, waiting to slice and dice and…collect.  Not everything makes sense here.  And I still think I may have missed something, somewhere, but I don’t think I did.  But, even with the best of movies, you can’t apply logic, and sadly, with a lot of modern horror movies, the further from logic you stay, the better.

This movie is well made, but well made can’t smooth over its shortcomings.  At 88 minutes, it crawls at times, but that’s due to some repetitiveness-  there is only so much that can be done with running up and down the same damn stairs, and going in and out of the same damn rooms.  As far as torture porn goes, you could do worse.  Those torture scenes are another problem, though:  They get old.  I don’t know about any of you, but torture shouldn’t be padding to extend the movie’s running time.  Give me story.  The actors in The Collector are good, they could have carried a story instead of scenes of screaming, crying, and wincing in pain.

3 out of 5
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