Helena in box Marcus Dunsten, together with Patrick Melton, responsible for the best parts of “Saw”, “Collector” of the first, the trilogy “Feast” and, let’s not recall, “Piranches 2”, continue to engage in sequels, this time to the main slasher of our time, their own authorship. We can immediately say that the difference between the masterpiece "Collector" and "Collection" (as "Collector 2" is called in the original) is the same as between the first and second parts of "Saw". If “Saw” revolutionized thrillers, becoming the brightest genre work of our time, then “Collector” made the same deconstruction of the genre with slashers, and to repeat such a second time – a task almost impossible.
No matter how the film tried to continue the storyline of Arkin, the main character, it seems that the authors were going to keep the maximum distance from the first film. Yes, there are flashbacks, memories, but here they absolutely do not touch the family line with debts and family (although the wife does appear in a cameo), do not talk about the case with the family from the first picture, making a bunch of completely left-wing reports, and generally on the main central line they try to create their “Aliens” by sending a detachment of brave warriors to fight a maniac, leaving the only one who got out of the lair as a “consultant”.
At the same time, towards the first picture there are quite a lot of small references, such as wandering spiders, cannibal dogs, placed traps and the like. The ingenuity of the maniac to become a grandfather-Pilet goes towards mechanisms, chopping the nightclub with a large meat grinder, reworking the embroidered with blades and a press. While the first film took just the simplicity of designs - hanging fishing hooks, an abundance of traps on the floor, a cannibal watchdog. Everything was simpler and more entertaining, and here the traps play the role of an entertaining meat grinder. Moreover, the main global and large-scale feature appears at the very beginning, then there are simply no trump cards in the sleeve. Even the most emotional and tense here turned out to be a press with barely familiar to the viewer the best girlfriend of the heroine, while the main characters do not worry completely.
References to the first part of the case, of course, is not limited. The count of homages goes to dozens, here you and “Saw 2”, whose building is almost identical to the entourage of the second “Collector”, and Freddy Krueger, sliding blades across a metal cage, and films about zombies and infected cannibals, dogs from “Hostel 2” (no longer Rottweilers), and even the main fetish of a maniac – to collect terrible works of art from corpses were already, at least, in the art-thriller “I Come with the Rain”, and the final burning of this gobel from the old church, under the skin of his corpses.
By the way, if Arkin is still performed by the bright actor Josh Stewart, then the collector maniac is played by a completely different man. However, according to tradition, we, as in the first part, never show the face of a maniac, even if he wanders in the frame without a mask. The set of new heroes does not please anything special. Rich disabled father, heroic victim named Elena, a squad of brave guys with a boy-baba, who are kind of like a “super-cool team”, but the maniac crushes them, like Myers and Voorhees defenseless students. Although with the most important soldier at the end there is a good fight on the knives.
The first collector was able to surprise every 10 minutes. It was a deconstruction of the genre and an absolute anti-stamp in everything, in it one script twist famously replaced another, and at the end there was such a witty set of tricks and dashing plot twists, then there was no limit to surprise. “Collector 2” does not offer such an abundance of games with the genre, and for the most part slides into something good, but stamped, like “Laid to rest” (" Buried), and yet sometimes gives such a dashing anti-stamp in the spirit of disappearing from the villain in the room with a blinking light bulb, and other beautifully played scenes of fooling a maniac in episodes in which, according to tradition, he always overtakes his victim. Thus, the contrast of the villain is very well conveyed - he is an overly intelligent killer machine, then really just a person capable of making mistakes, confusing, not having time, missing and getting injured.
And although the plot part, the general tension and the number of unexpected moves in the sequel are sharply inferior to the previous film, the sequel came out an order of magnitude tougher, bloody and brutal. Even closing your eyes to the massacre in the club, evaluating directly the main plot of wandering around the house, the film will be able to quite surprise with its methods of violence and provide a lot of horror.
In fact, the sequel was much easier than the first film. The family is fine, Arkin signs up for the case without much motive, Elena is in the box, like several other kidnapped characters, ammo loaded, traps set. A bloody survival game begins with inventive mechanisms and a regularly decreasing number of participants.
But the main problem is that the film does not even look stylistically like the first film. In The Collector, Dunsten delighted with the steepest angles of the rooms from above, the fall of a thunderstorm, beautiful views in Horror and the ability to create an ominous and dense atmosphere in the chamber space. There's nothing like that in the second part. No cool memorable angles, no sinister appearance of the mansion and the surrounding fog, no “maze” from above. And it is unlikely that after seven (give a sequel!!) parts of “Saw” the local single murders will be remembered for a long time. That's except that the slaughterhouse from the disco, although the coolest and cult such scene will always remain the opening of the first "Blade".
"Collector 2" but pleases the quality of its dismembered, everything looks creepy and natural, without slipping into thrash. And also all these creepy scenes with furry spiders, crawling large cockroaches and other abominations will definitely add to the sharpness of sensations. There will be nudity, not as beautiful and rich as in the first film, but two topless dancing lesbians at the disco will consolidate the well-deserved rating R.
If you do not look up to the masterpiece of the first film, it turned out very qualitatively and perfectly. All the ingredients of a good modern slasher are in place and correctly placed, the masked maniac is impressive, and the methods of murder deliver brutality and originality. There is something to surprise and impress. But such a film is unlikely to remain in the history of horror. He, like the second “Saw”, shot by a very bad and mediocre director-Bausman, is trying to squeeze the juice from the masterpiece of James Wan and Lee Wannell, and if “Saw” rocked into a successful franchise only for the fourth series, it is worth thinking about whether the franchise “Collector” will go far. A very original ending can, in principle, put an end to the continuations. This is not a bad thing.
8 out of 10
Original
