The Collection (2012)
The Gist: When Elena’s friends take her to a secret party at an undisclosed location, she never imagined she would become the latest victim of The Collector, a psychopathic killer. The Collector kidnaps and transports her to an abandoned hotel he’s transformed into his own private maze of torture and death. Upon learning of his daughter’s disappearance, Elena’s wealthy father (Christopher McDonald) hires a group of mercenaries to retrieve her from the vicious grips of The Collector. These mercenaries coerce Arkin, the only man to have escaped the wrath of this heinous monster, to lead them through the gruesome labyrinth. Now, Arkin finds himself fighting for his own life in order to save Elena. — (C) Official Site
The Collected: Josh Stewart (Arkin), Emma Fitzpatrick (Elena), Lee Tergesen (Lucello), Randall Archer (The Collector)
My Take: This is a follow-up to The Collector (2009) which introduced us to Arkin, the down and out pro-thief and the Collector – psycho extraordinaire. My first question when watching the preview for this flick was how did Arkin actually escape the formidable killer? That question is answered in the first 15ish minutes as a bloodbath unfolds and this tale of violence, torture and depravity gets established. The premise is similar to the first as Arkin is unwillingly drawn into the killer’s maze and game to save a stranger. This movie looks good with brighter imagery -I found The Collector dark and some scenes difficult to see- and the gruesomeness of what the killer is doing to his victims is shown in more detail; not that I felt it was necessary to clearly display the portraits of human suffering.
Final Thoughts: The Collection is a good follow-up to The Collector and I liked seeing what happened to Arkin after the end of the first flick. Josh Stewart and Lee Tergesen were good as always but I felt that the character of Elena was just too lucky or inexplicably skilled at avoiding the traps and the killer. Overall, this was a good movie and good continuation of The Collector story line.
Dawning Creates 
I haven’t seen either film yet because I’ve read such mixed reviews. Perhaps I’ll see if they are Netflix streaming 🙂
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I put off seeing The Collector for the same reason and only watched it recently. I wasn’t expecting much from The Collection but I enjoyed. The Collection is on Nexflix, not sure if The Collector is. I watched it on the Canadian Netflix.
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