The Collection (2012)

A bizarre serial killer called The Collector (Randall Archer) has made his way into a sequel. His modus operandi sees him locking up a group of people somewhere and slaughtering them with the help of physics-sceptical death traps as well as more hands-on efforts until only one victim is left. Him or her, he loads into a neat little trunk and carts to his murder castle (quite traditionally situated in an old hotel building named after Dario Argento) where he has fun with torture, drugs, and the creation of modern art of the sort I suspect Rob Zombie would love.

For reasons, the Collector likes to bring an earlier trunked victim to his next crime. Which affords thief Arkin (Josh Stewart), the survivor of the first film I believe, an opportunity to escape the crazyman while he’s killing a horde of teenagers on a warehouse party in various hilarious way. The Collector then trunks survivor Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) and carries her home to have his various ways with her. Elena, it turns out, was not a terribly good choice of victim. She’s a ten out of ten on the Final Girl effectiveness scale, and I’m pretty sure she’d kick the guy’s ass herself rather well.

However, she doesn’t have to do the job alone, because she’s also the child of a very rich father as well as under the protection of a rather effective security guy named Lucello (Lee Tergesen). Lucello convinces Arkin to lead him and a small band of mercenaries (among them Andre Royo and Shannon Kane) to The Collector’s murder palace. Arkin has seen Aliens so he’s not willing to lead Lucello and his people any further than the entry to Collector central but once there, their guns are rather convincing for him to change his mind.

Now they only have to fight their way through a bunch of the killer’s drugged up zombie victims, survive a cornucopia of death traps, and somehow find Elena in this somewhat creepy labyrinth. It’s good for all involved that Elena can take care of herself and that Arkin will find his heroic spirit.

I thought Marcus Dunstan’s The Collector was a pretty useless Saw-alike crossed with a slasher with even less substance, care and style than that series or that genre show; Dunstan’s own sequel, on the other hand, doesn’t just beat the Saw movies by a wide margin but also has a personality of its own. Sure, its personality is stitched together out of the parts of other movies but it’s the right parts put together in the right way, presented with an eye for the lurid and the outrageous.

While nobody – certainly not I - would suggest The Collection to be subtle, it is a rather more clever and coherent film than I expected it to be. Early on, around minute eleven or so, the film establishes that it isn’t taking place anywhere that might be confused with the real world through the rather fun, rather absurd and rather cool party slaughter scene. After that point, one might expect the film to continue to just throw random disjointed crap at its audience but the first fifteen minutes or so actually establish the specific kind of luridness and craziness the film is going for, and Dunstan just follows through for the rest of the movie, turning what by all rights should be a warehouse horror piece about people wandering from one random shock to the next (and dying) into a film that is lurid as hell but also of one piece – while still being all about people wandering through a warehouse, being shocked, and dying.

There’s an unexpected sense of aesthetic coherence on display into which the Collector lair’s Goth Metal cover look and feel fit perfectly well, making sense in context and providing the film with a coherent mood and style, as do the set design and the film’s very un-2012 thoughtful use of colours that reminded me of some of the better bits of 80s horror.

Even the writing works rather well, with the script going out of its way to add surprising little moments where a character’s action comments on other actions that happened before. Clearly a lot of effort is put into keeping the film’s main victims more than just meat for the killer to slaughter; this being the rare slasher film that actually realizes its killer is a right prick. I also very much enjoyed the little bits of action movie cheese that are sprinkled throughout the film, keeping things pleasantly crazy while never going so far as to breaking the established rules of the film’s world.

No One Lives (2012)

(Warning: Spoilers abound!)

Because their dumbest member Flynn (Derek Magyar) wants to prove himself after he needlessly (and dangerously) shot someone he really didn't need to kill, a backwoods clan of low-level criminals and toughs comes into possession of the car of two passing travellers in some kind of strained relationship - and, in another idiocy nobody approves of, of the travellers themselves. The situation doesn't improve at all when the female half of the couple (Laura Ramsey) uses a knife held at her throat as an opportunity for suicide. The man (Luke Evans) turns out to be a rather effective and brutal serial killer (though he sees himself as something more than just a mere serial killer, who are like kittens to his panther), and now a very angry one at that.

He is certainly not less angry once he realizes that the clan has found Emma (Adelaide Clemens), the young millionaire's daughter who was famously abducted some time ago while fourteen of her friends were slaughtered, hidden in his car. Things could still turn out okay for the crooks if they'd just do what Emma tells them to, namely to run at once and give her to the police. As it goes with people who have been tougher than anyone they ever met, the clan think they can cope with anything a single guy could throw at them, and decide to keep Emma and blackmail some money directly out of her father. They only realize too late that there's always somebody more dangerous somewhere, and they have just met him. In fact, Emma is the only person around on his level, which might be exactly what the killer wants her to be.

I think I have repeatedly aired my dislike for No One Lives director Ryuhei Kitamura's films. I may even have compared the experience of watching one of his movies to watching a monkey masturbate in slow motion, with added whooshing noises. Yes, I didn't even like Versus. So cover me surprised to realize I would describe No One Lives as great, bordering on brilliant.

Absolutely gone is Kitamura's tendency to overemphasise needlessly flashy directing tics and blunder his audience into submission by empty gestures of what's supposed to be coolness. In No One Lives, every edit, every camera movement is in service of the movie, not of stroking the director's ego via technical achievements. In fact, Kitamura leaves many of his most favourite directing tricks nearly completely in the bag, instead trusting in his ability to keep his audience interested with excellent pacing, a decidedly non-stupid script by David Cohen, and even - this has always been a particular weak spot in Kitamura's films - decent acting. Particularly the way Luke Evans turns his bland pretty boy looks into something frightening, and the way Adelaide Clemens projects complicated feelings via body language are remarkable, but even someone like America Olivo (whom I'd never have suspected of it) shows actual acting chops. Of course, we are talking about acting in the context of a horror thriller here, not a naturalistic piece about the troubles of academics, but I'm not going to complain when performances are exactly as they should be.

It's also a first in a Kitamura movie to find the director actually trusting in the performances, giving the actors just enough room to work, without getting distracted by a need to make a thousand edits a second or swirling his camera around while bullets fly in slow-motion. In this film, the director seems absolutely concentrated, using his (always unquestionably high) technical proficiency to tell a simple yet clever story excitingly. He does this much more efficiently than I ever would have expected.

It does help that Cohen's script does some rather clever things with the way it plays with the slasher and the larger "serial killer on the rampage" genres he's working in, without ever forgetting to add enough blood and gore to satisfy the baser needs of his audience. I'm not quite convinced of the film's ending, though. I see where it is going with it thematically, yet I don't think the ending as it actually happens is as satisfying as the rest of the narrative. But then I always want to see the final girl in these films win completely under her own powers and (unrealistically) not end up psychologically damaged beyond repair.

That minor quibble aside, No One Lives is quite an achievement. Suddenly, I'm even looking forward to Ryuhei Kitamura's next movie.

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