The Collector is Underrated...Fight Me

Dan

4/13/2020

In these quarantine times, we are finding that we have more time to relax and enjoy the people around us. I was sitting on the couch with my wife the other night, browsing through Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access, and Amazon Prime, looking for a movie to watch. I was in the mood for a good horror flick, and some of the newer ones just couldn’t pique my interest. I finally settled on an older, classic movie from the late 2000’s, The Collector. I have seen this movie before, a long time ago, and remembered that it was a decent film. As I sat there, totally engrossed in the story, I quickly realized that The Collector is an extremely underrated movie that was lost in the plethora of horror movies that had been released in the same decade.

The Collector came out at the end of the decade, 2009. This was the era of the more realistic horror movies that concentrated on scenarios that were more grounded in reality than the supernatural. Sure, we had some gems like Paranormal Activity, Drag Me To Hell, and Trick ‘r Treat, but these were the paranormal entries of this time. The Collector was a movie about an ordinary guy that was thrust into a life or death situation against another human. In my opinion, these types of movies are the scariest and the creepiest, because these are things that can actually happen. I remember when The Collector came out. It wasn’t as highly advertised as some of the other movies in that time period. I remember maybe seeing one or two trailers on it and didn’t really give it much thought until I saw it for rent at my local Blockbuster, this was before they all closed down. When you go up against movies like The Strangers and The Ruins, which came out around the same time, you tend to get lost in the fold. The Strangers became the benchmark for the home invasion genre of horror movies, and if you didn’t have the same formula, you didn’t really get noticed.

However, watching The Collector for a third time (I think), you tend to disagree with that statement. While The Strangers was a great movie (the sequel kind of ruined the premise of it all, utilizing the exact same formula as the first movie), The Collector surpasses it in multiple aspects. The Collector is an anxiety driven, edge of your seat, can’t pause it for any reason, is he going to get caught, where is the little one, type of movie. While The Strangers has a decent anxiety factor to it, The Collector thrives on it. From the moment the unlikely protagonist steps into the light deprived house, it is one heart-pounding moment after another. There are multiple moments in the movie where you are hoping the primary protagonist isn’t seen and is able to “get away”, and multiple scenes where the protagonist and the antagonist are mere feet away from each other and you are waiting for that “gotcha” moment. Of course we know, going into the movie, that there is going to be a somewhat satisfying ending, and of course a cliffhanger (which leads into the sequel The Collection, and the third, set to release sometime this year, The Collected), but we are still wondering how the hero is going to pull it off.

For all you gore fans, like me, there are plenty of moments in the film that are blood soaked. One thing I can say about this movie, is that, while the amount of gore might be limited, the scenes in which we see someone disemboweled, or running into a room filled with bear traps, or thrown against a wall full of knives is oddly satisfying.

If you haven’t seen this movie, and you are a horror fan like me, you need to watch this film. If you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on one of the most underrated, home invasion movies of the late 2000’s, and possibly to this day. If you have seen it and dismissed it as just another “guy trying to get away movie”, you need to watch it again. You might find that you have a new appreciation for the film and the home invasion genre.