With the hugely profitable Saw franchise losing steam and clearly coming to an end at the time (at least for a good long while), a new horror icon made his debut on the big screen and aimed to take up Jigsaw’s mantle as the master of torture. I’m of course referring to The Collector, released just a few months prior to Saw‘s sixth installment in late July 2009.
I bring up The Collector and the Saw franchise in the same breath for a handful of reasons, one of them being that the former film was directed by Marcus Dunstan and co-written by Dunstan and Patrick Melton, the duo who together wrote Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI and later Saw 3D for Lionsgate. And not only are there similarities between the unnamed “Collector” and Jigsaw, but it’s interesting to note that The Collector actually began its life as a pitch for a prequel to the Saw franchise. In many ways, it was literally born out of Saw‘s success.
But The Collector, make no mistake, was its own beast entirely. Like the original Saw, it was one of the rare horror films from the past 10 years that was clearly begging for a sequel, introducing a badass new villain while also pairing him up with a memorable hero as his adversary. No, not a final girl but rather a “final guy,” another rarity in the horror world.
Playing out like an intense, ultra violent home invasion film, The Collector introduced Arkin O’Brien (Josh Stewart), a compelling hero precisely because his life choices all but ensured that he was never supposed to be one. In order to pay a debt and save his family, ex-con Arkin breaks into his employer’s home while the family is away (or so he thinks…), and he soon realizes that he’s not alone in the house. This begins a game of cat-and-mouse between Arkin and the trap-happy “Collector,” a sinister dude with a black mask and uber creepy glowing eyes.
The Collector’s particular approach to murder? He likes to rig up Jigsaw-like traps in homes and dispatch entire families, “collecting” one survivor from each house he hits up. In The Collector, Arkin is the one “collected” in the final moments, setting up a sequel that the film’s box office take was high enough to warrant: The Collection, released in 2012.
Taking the Aliens approach to The Collector‘s Alien, The Collection amped up the action for a sequel that was less tense but arguably even more fun, centered on a group of mercenaries who enlist the help of Arkin to take down the Collector on his home turf: the Argento Hotel (wink, wink), where we finally get to see the Collector’s collection on full display.
The Collection doubled down on the fun factor right off the bat with a glorious opening scene, wherein the Collector goes full Ghost Ship and turns an entire dance club into a human meat grinder. The sequel unleashed gory mayhem the whole way through, firmly establishing Arkin as a badass franchise hero and the Collector as a truly iconic franchise villain.
And yet, despite The Collection leaving us off on a cliffhanger (Arkin collects the Collector!), we never did get a third film to truly turn The Collector into a franchise. Sadly, The Collection was a box office flop in 2012, pulling in just $8.9 million *worldwide* on a reported $10 million production budget. Prior to those numbers coming in, a sequel was very much on the menu.
In a chat right here on Bloody Disgusting prior to the film’s release, Dunstan and Melton told us that the third film’s working title was The Collected, and that it was to show us the Collector without his mask. They teased, “It has to be a different movie. The first two are their own experience. [The Collected] is what happens now.”
As of August 2017, Dunstan still had a strong desire to bring Arkin back and complete the trilogy. He told Addicted to Horror Movies at that time, “We’ve been taking slooooow steps toward having something more concrete to share than ‘we hope so!’ I will bellow loud & proud when such a day comes this way!”
That day still hasn’t come. And though the under-performance of The Collection suggests it sadly may never, we’re still holding out hope that we haven’t seen the last of the Collector.
Maybe if we’re all loud enough…
