Former convict turned handyman Arkin O’Brien (Josh Stewart) has a problem: If he doesn’t pay off his debt to some loan sharks, they’ll have his wife and daughter killed. Seeing few options, Arkin heads to an old client’s house to rob them — and discovers his client’s family is already being held and tortured by a masked psychopath who delights in putting his victims through sick, twisted games. Trapped in a house loaded top to bottom with traps, Arkin has to fight to survive.
This might sound a little like the Saw movies, with good reason: The Collector, originally titled The Midnight Man, was at one point being considered as a spin-off prequel for the Saw franchise, as an origin story for Jigsaw. Saw’s original producers read the script, though, and rejected the idea. Jigsaw’s origin story was later told in other movies, and The Midnight Man’s script got reworked into The Collector. It wasn’t all bad news for director Marcus Dunstan, though; he and co-writer Patrick Melton eventually got to be part of the Saw franchise, writing the screenplays for Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, and Saw 3D.
Releasing The Collector as a standalone film didn’t push it into the limelight as much as making it a Saw prequel would have, but I personally think that was for the best. The Collector stands on its own as a movie, rather than being compared to every other chapter in the franchise. Having watched it repeatedly, I can confidently say that Dunstan and Melton made a memorable movie. They twist the knife right from the start by letting us get to know our victims and their struggles before violently tearing them away, and they keep escalating the tension with each gut-wrenching scheme that the masked killer forces Arkin and others through, in a house that redefines “booby-trapped.”
The killer in The Collector doesn’t have Jigsaw’s “moral” justification for his murders. He isn’t torturing people to teach them a lesson: After a disturbing childhood incident only he survived, he relishes re-enacting the pain visited on him by targeting families and collecting the survivors to add to his collection. If you enjoy psychedelic visuals, jump scares, and enough gore to make you feel queasy, you’ll be able to easily forgive the admittedly flimsy reasoning for this killer’s activities. Hey, at least he makes his kills look artsy.
Polygon’s annual Halloween Countdown is a 31-day run of short recommendations of the best horror movies, shows, TV episodes, and online specials to stream for the Halloween season. You can find the entire calendar here.
