It started some time in the 90s, roughly. The typical big-screen serial-killer's power, stamina, skills, intelligence, and incredible luck grew with every additional retarded thriller. Eventually – and this was a natural progression of the retarded regression of this increasingly cretinous sub-genre – the serial-killer acquired magical powers as well, but without becoming a ghost or a demon (which is the only way all this illogical piffle could be half-way justified). This is when the movie serial-killer became invincible. By the 00s, he had as much power as all the Nordic and Hindu gods combined, and then some. TC: another recent entry in a long line of such amazingly mindless little filmic concoctions. If green, bug-eyed aliens ever invade us and slaughter us all, they might one day find a copy of TC, watch it, and then realize: "Yup, we were right all along. We did the right thing."
The "Collector" (duh name) is a man (not a creature) who has no rhyme, reason, or purpose. He simply shows up at a random household, kills and tortures everyone in sight, but has a generally friendly relationship with spiders and large blood-sucking cockroaches (which he keeps in jars and occasionally feeds with blood pouring out of his victims' stomachs). We are told by his bloodied and beaten up "bait" that the Collector "kills people he doesn't need, and keeps those he wants". (Huh?) Not in one scene is there the slightest indication that this might be true; he kills everyone. Besides, what would he keep any of those dumb stereotypes captive for? They're awfully-written Tinseltown characters; who the hell needs them? I certainly don't. So in a sense "the collector" is quite right to kill them all, but while he's at it he should have gone for the writers' and the director's throats, too, and then jumped off a cliff: the only way to get rid of ALL of the wasteful carbon-based debris here.
Nor is it even clear how the hell "bait" knows this about "the collector", considering that the killer doesn't utter a word during the entire movie. I can't quite picture the killer driving, with "bait" sitting in the back of the van in his box, the two holding a conversation: "Well, you know, I keep those I want and kill those I don't want. That's kinda my shtick." In fact, when the movie finishes, you are none-the-wiser about either the killer's appearance, motivation or his background. He starts off as the perennial non-descript Man In The Mask, and he leaves the movie as the Man In The Mask, pissing off in his van. The point? None. What have we gained from TC? Diarrhea. The writers didn't even bother to give us a back-story, not even vague clues to it. To return the favour, I won't bother to watch anything else they ever did or will do in the future; certainly a great way to build up a fan-base.
The killer manages to set about a gazillion booby-traps within a single night, a workload that a team of experts would be required for, working for at least a day. The booby-traps are so intricate and spread out that it would require slow tip-toe walking – at all times – for this so-called "collector" to even move about the house without falling into any of them, especially since it is dark half the time. He has super-human strength (and this description might be considered an insult by "the collector" because his physical prowess is about 1000 times larger than super-human), and yet the burglar manages to throw him around the kitchen like a rag doll. Even sillier, by that point the burglar shouldn't have had energy left to punch out a baby seal, let alone a killer with Jedi powers; the burglar had already been cut, butchered, tortured, burned, slashed and diced Perhaps he too has super-human powers? Why would I even ask this question: of course he does.
As does the little girl. Her very predictable survival is just one of the many symptoms of the clichéd script. Somehow she manages to achieve what none of the seven adults had. Not the only predictable plot-device or turn of events: did the writers of this tired script actually think that we didn't anticipate that the burglar would be hit by a police car? That's the oldest shtick in the book. What we could NOT anticipate however was that the writers would actually get "the collector" to ram his car against the ambulance and then pick up the burglar, whom he then very predictably sticks into his "bait-box" - nevermind the dozen police cars all around.
Just so the film-makers ensured that we know that everyone in this movie is either a mindless zombie moron or a hell-fire demon-god, the burglar actually CARES about the fact that he's got the diamond, and even ASKS the ambulance technician what time it is so that he can deliver it on time to his loser wife. That scene could have been so funny – in a silly ZAZ comedy. Why would they include such a goofy, funny moment in a sadistic-killer-on-the-loose thriller. I am so SURPRISED that such a perfectly put-together movie would have such a silly glitch.
But it's me who's silly; I am actually trying to tie some of these dumb shenanigans to the real world. TC's parallel universe makes the "Hellraiser" franchise seem like a BBC science documentary series. There is nothing in this run-of-the-mill flick that even remotely has to do with the world we humans inhabit. This ridiculous "story" might as well be set on planet Zong.
The "Collector" (duh name) is a man (not a creature) who has no rhyme, reason, or purpose. He simply shows up at a random household, kills and tortures everyone in sight, but has a generally friendly relationship with spiders and large blood-sucking cockroaches (which he keeps in jars and occasionally feeds with blood pouring out of his victims' stomachs). We are told by his bloodied and beaten up "bait" that the Collector "kills people he doesn't need, and keeps those he wants". (Huh?) Not in one scene is there the slightest indication that this might be true; he kills everyone. Besides, what would he keep any of those dumb stereotypes captive for? They're awfully-written Tinseltown characters; who the hell needs them? I certainly don't. So in a sense "the collector" is quite right to kill them all, but while he's at it he should have gone for the writers' and the director's throats, too, and then jumped off a cliff: the only way to get rid of ALL of the wasteful carbon-based debris here.
Nor is it even clear how the hell "bait" knows this about "the collector", considering that the killer doesn't utter a word during the entire movie. I can't quite picture the killer driving, with "bait" sitting in the back of the van in his box, the two holding a conversation: "Well, you know, I keep those I want and kill those I don't want. That's kinda my shtick." In fact, when the movie finishes, you are none-the-wiser about either the killer's appearance, motivation or his background. He starts off as the perennial non-descript Man In The Mask, and he leaves the movie as the Man In The Mask, pissing off in his van. The point? None. What have we gained from TC? Diarrhea. The writers didn't even bother to give us a back-story, not even vague clues to it. To return the favour, I won't bother to watch anything else they ever did or will do in the future; certainly a great way to build up a fan-base.
The killer manages to set about a gazillion booby-traps within a single night, a workload that a team of experts would be required for, working for at least a day. The booby-traps are so intricate and spread out that it would require slow tip-toe walking – at all times – for this so-called "collector" to even move about the house without falling into any of them, especially since it is dark half the time. He has super-human strength (and this description might be considered an insult by "the collector" because his physical prowess is about 1000 times larger than super-human), and yet the burglar manages to throw him around the kitchen like a rag doll. Even sillier, by that point the burglar shouldn't have had energy left to punch out a baby seal, let alone a killer with Jedi powers; the burglar had already been cut, butchered, tortured, burned, slashed and diced Perhaps he too has super-human powers? Why would I even ask this question: of course he does.
As does the little girl. Her very predictable survival is just one of the many symptoms of the clichéd script. Somehow she manages to achieve what none of the seven adults had. Not the only predictable plot-device or turn of events: did the writers of this tired script actually think that we didn't anticipate that the burglar would be hit by a police car? That's the oldest shtick in the book. What we could NOT anticipate however was that the writers would actually get "the collector" to ram his car against the ambulance and then pick up the burglar, whom he then very predictably sticks into his "bait-box" - nevermind the dozen police cars all around.
Just so the film-makers ensured that we know that everyone in this movie is either a mindless zombie moron or a hell-fire demon-god, the burglar actually CARES about the fact that he's got the diamond, and even ASKS the ambulance technician what time it is so that he can deliver it on time to his loser wife. That scene could have been so funny – in a silly ZAZ comedy. Why would they include such a goofy, funny moment in a sadistic-killer-on-the-loose thriller. I am so SURPRISED that such a perfectly put-together movie would have such a silly glitch.
But it's me who's silly; I am actually trying to tie some of these dumb shenanigans to the real world. TC's parallel universe makes the "Hellraiser" franchise seem like a BBC science documentary series. There is nothing in this run-of-the-mill flick that even remotely has to do with the world we humans inhabit. This ridiculous "story" might as well be set on planet Zong.