REVIEWS

The Collector at it again

By Matthew Odam

FILM: The Collection

CAST: Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick

DIRECTION: Marcus Dunstan

 few years ago audiences watched in horror as Arkin (Josh Stewart) endured all manner of torture in Marcus Dunstan’s The Collector. Now audiences get the chance to cheer/squirm along as Arkin exacts revenge in Dunstan’s follow-up, The Collection.

The sequel picks up with Arkin escaping from The Collector’s box during an entrapment party at a dance club. But The Collector won’t go long without a victim. After destroying dozens of people with his wicked assortment of crushing and slicing tools, The Collector takes gorgeous Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) hostage.

Arkin’s escape may be the salvation Elena needs from the demented Collector. Emma’s father, injured in a car crash at the movie’s beginning (a weird subplot that is somehow supposed to make us feel a special bond between father and daughter), hires a team of assassins to invade The Collector’s compound and secure Elena. They will use Arkin as the tip of their spear and their bait.

Although Arkin owes Elena’s family nothing and has never met the hired killers, there is an immediate and unbelievable hostility between the scruffy torture victim and the team’s leader, Lucello (Lee Tergesen).

When Elena escapes from the box in which she was transported, she discovers that she has been taken hostage by a sick man who is disassembling human bodies and reconstructing them like life-sized dolls.

Lucello’s squad has to avoid a series of booby traps in order to reach Elena and save her from certain death in the dark, labyrinthine warehouse. The chase and escape deliver no palpable sense of fear, and the emotional story underlying the plot has no resonance.

The Collection never hits audiences in the stomach with any immediate sense of danger, and the dialogue and most of the performances feel entirely too campy for the movie to actually be taken seriously. Maybe that is the point, but I don’t think so.

More than anything, the sequel feels like an excuse for Dunstan and his effects team to see how creative they could be in the bloody killing of people using all manners of pointy metal objects. But, as is often the case, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. While I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it all and quietly left the theatre after the screening, dozens of other folks cheered and hollered with glee at the film’s conclusion.

And, no, The Collector’s face is never revealed, so that possibly leaves the door open for a third movie in the series.- Austin American-Statesman,MCT

Monstrously funny

FILM: Spiders

CAST:  William Hope, Shelly Varod, Brian Hankey 

Director: Tibor Takacs

ack in the day giant monster movies were all the rage thanks to King Kong and Godzilla. Now they seem to only pop up from time to and usually in low budget films that don’t offer all that much. The latest Spiders, is the latest creature feature to crawling onto DVD, but will it be enough to make your skin crawl or be just another generic TV channel style cheese fest?

The film follows a city under siege from a new species of poisonous spiders as they mutate into gigantic proportions after crashing to Earth on a destroyed Soviet space station. If the plot sounds ridiculous, it is, but that is usually the case in these sorts of films. If you can’t separate yourself for the silly nature of things to come then you shouldn’t be investing your time into this film. That being said, Spiders is a lot of fun. Believe it or not, it doesn’t come off like a cheesy SyFy channel as you would expect. It shows that this film either had a decent budget or was just used wisely to make it work as opposed to just slapping something together.

The story is pretty straightforward and works for what they are trying to accomplish. It’s very reminiscent of the film Them where as the military are forced to take on giant ants, but here with spiders. It starts off a bit slow initially, but quickly kicks into gear to let unleash the spiders on the city with each getting bigger than the next. Wisely they seemed to have spent a good amount of the films budget on the Spiders themselves which makes this film work even better.

The spiders look pretty cool, with only a couple times that they feel CGI. There are some great classic giant monster shots, including an aerial shot of the giant spider running through the city complete with tanks and spotlights that is really cool.

Make no mistake, this is a silly monster movie and doesn’t try to be anything else. It works because they take it serious in an attempt to create a fun monster movie and succeeded. There are not major stars here and the acting is average, but if you love monster films, then give Spiders a shot.— RG

A new look at a

classic fairy tale

FILM: Once Upon a Time in the West! Cinderella (animation)

DIRECTION: Pascal Herold

nce upon a time... in the West, there was a secluded, pigtailed cowgirl who worked day and night for her wicked stepmother and evil stepsisters in their dusty frontier town.  

But this is not your typical Cinderella story: When the mother of handsome Prince Vladimir is kidnapped by high-flying desert pirates, Cinderella - with the help of her magical native spiritualist - takes off on an action-packed quest to rescue the Duchess, claim the missing tooth she lost at the ball, and capture the Prince’s heart to become a real princess.

Get ready to saddle up for a new look at a classic fairy tale, filled with big adventure, fun surprises and eye-popping animation. — WS

(DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)