The Collector (2009) is available for free on Tubi and I was excited to watch it again for the first time in along time. The story is about a man in debt to his ex-wife, an ex-wife who is in debt with a loan shark. He plans a heist at a residence he doesn't know is booby trapped with various death traps set up by a serial killer. This movie is directed by Marcus Dunstan (Feast and The Collection) and stars Diane Ayala Goldner (Feast and Halloween II),Juan Fernandez (Crocodile Dundee),Josh Stewart (The Dark Knight),Andrea Roth (War) and Michael Reilly Burke (Mars Attacks!). The storyline, characters and execution is so good in this. The kill scenes are gory and the movie flows so well. I can't say I 100% loved the ending, but I really enjoyed the movie. I really recommend watching this if you haven't. I'd score it a solid 8/10.

For years I always thought there was only one Collector movie, or maybe two if you included a movie I dimly recall from the 1960s, one which was interesting if not all that scary. Then I discovered I'd seen The Collection (2012),a diabolical assault upon a nightclub, from memory, one to rival Saw. It was an easy enough mistake, as both Collector and Collection have almost identical dvd covers. I've just watched The Collector. WOW! Eat your heart out Saw, as Collector is more thrilling, just as diabolical, and just a tad crueler, the essential difference being that the perpetrator in Saw is something of a 'justice vigilante', whereas The Collector's fiend is just plain evil. A nervous watch for sure, and easily worth a 10.

THE COLLECTOR is a middling torture porn-based horror flick with an absolutely ridiculous story. The premise is just as nonsensical as in BURNING BRIGHT - you know, the film about a girl and her little brother trapped in a house with a TIGER - but even more so due to its complexity. The story sees a burglar entering the house of a rich family in the middle of the night, only to discover a crazed killer has set up home and filled the house with deadly traps.

It makes no sense and there's no attempt to try to rationalise or explain things. Instead we embark on a horror-themed journey in which death and bodily mutilation are the order of the day. The plotting is very slim and the characters even slimmer, with the supporting cast merely set up as cannon fodder for the admittedly creepy villain.

What I disliked about this film was the dark blue filter which gives it a boring, uniform look, and the lack of lighting means that you'll be straining your eyes throughout. Given this was made by people coming off the SAW franchise, the icky effects are very much along those lines; I'm indifferent to them. THE COLLECTOR has a fast pace going for it but there are too many contrivances to make it a truly effective horror piece.