The Collector: Critic Reviews

A sub-Saw knockoff that manages to be brutal yet monotonous, not to mention monstrously unpleasant.

One of the more doltish entries in the torture subgenre.

This is a crass, silly and baffling slice of torture porn -- with the audience being tortured, chiefly with boredom.

One trap leaves a woman impaled on a movie screen, producing an image that succinctly if literally sums up a genre's cynicism.

A surprisingly stylish and confident high-concept thriller.

The editing and camera work are self-consciously stylish, as if to say "We're better than this." But the human and moral components are shortchanged.

If you didn't already know The Collector was written by two Saw franchise hacks, and directed by one of them, it would soon become as obvious as a fish hook to the face.

Watching The Collector becomes an experience not so much of dread as big virtual ouches.

The Collector grafts a torture porn payoff onto a heist thriller setup with messy, illogical results.

Critiquing the filmic technique of this blatant horror franchise-bait is akin to quibbling with the shade of lipstick on a slaughtered pig.

It's not a classic, but I have a good feeling about The Collector as a new horror villain with a bit of mileage...

Some of the most fiercely inventive and twisted trap-based bloodletting we've had in ages.

Delivers gruesomeness but not a whole lot else.

Relentlessly bloody and just as relentlessly idiotic deathtrap thriller for the Saw crowd.

Another relentlessly violent rampage with no discernible point whatsoever.

A ludicrous, gratuitous torture porn with an idiotic ending. But within those boundaries it's absolutely at the top of its game.

'Horror romp' would be an apt description of the 90 minute story, only with the original concept detailed as a burglar breaking into a serial killer's home, it's difficult not to think what might have been.

It has a noticeably 80s retro vibe, while the sheer inventiveness of the slayings paper over a very thin and familiar storyline.

People are cut, tongues meet pliers and at one point a cat gets sliced in half. Beyond that, there's very little here.

It's a truly creepy concept which, inevitably, leaves room for a sequel.

Dunstan makes his directorial debut with this fast-paced, suspenseful horror that wastes no time on pointless exposition, but instead tosses plenty of genuinely tense moments into this primal fear-fest.

The Collector must be the laziest horror film of the year - the camerawork stinks, the action's boring and the plot holes are so glaring they wouldn't get past a lobotomised goose.

A nerve-fraying new take on the home-invasion horror.

Sick is the word.