Absolutely brilliant film.

My God. It is 2011 and I had only heard about The Collector, from what I was told, the movie was poor, not engaging and about as poor and embarrassing a film as Case 39, which is truly cringe worthy.

I finally decided to purchase the film and my God I am stunned at how effective this film was.

First off I loved the saturated colours, the intense darkness of the lighting, the uses of different hues, the grain and noise effects really sink the atmosphere into grime, grit, dirt, filth, and blackness. The movie also used some wonderful cinematography that I had not seen used in a genre such as this.

I suppose the closest some of the camera angles, shots and overall cinematography could be compared to is the Saw series, but The Collector takes the concepts, and reshapes, bends them and twists them for enthralling pans, twirls and stills, very very creative. I think this is some of the most inventive camera work for some time.

As for the film itself the plot was simply a device. Man cases families house, man needs money, man plays robbery, utter and total chaos descends thereafter, and brilliantly as well. It is not easy to set 85% of a film in basically one location, one area and extract it for all its worth.

It takes ingenuity and a clever mind, and while The Collector did not to me; take full advantage it came pretty close at smartly using one location and a small surrounding area in creative ways to keep the audience engaged, interested and wondering what was going to happen next.

I see people criticizing this film for the usual horror tropes which beyond ridiculous and almost laughable. In every gore, thriller or horror film there will be silly Policemen, that do nothing. It has been this way since the 1970s and better films and worse films like this use Police in the same way. Asking how did The Collector find time to set all these traps, and even go on to criticize the film for not being realistic? Are these people even remotely serious?

Transformers 3 is a bad film because its a bad film it has nothing to do with realism, in a God forsaken slasher, cat and mouse flick. Realism is the dead last excuse someone should even attempt to bring to the table.

I find these attempts not only preposterous, but subterfuge, and if for using a better word; lame. It's almost desperate reaching.

Was The Collector perfect? Far from, I actually wanted more gore, more chaos and more madness, but what I viewed was great, and I hear there is a sequel coming out and I hope the directors and writers follow the same cinematography and oppressive darkness of the first.

Personally I cannot wait.

Final rating 7/10.