Patrick Smith’s review published on Letterboxd:
I have to assume the conventions of the action movie and the horror flick have been combined before but I cant remember ever watching one that used the tropes as effectively as The Collection did. This isn't to say that it didn't have its share of problems but the idea of a team of mercenaries raiding the secret lair of a slasher like Leather face or Michael Myers to hopefully save his latest victim is a good one.
A thief named Arkin (Josh Stewart) who was captured by The Collector (both the designation for the films slasher and the title of the original film of which this is a sequel) escapes during the films opening doozy of a kill and indadvertedly leads a young woman named Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) being captured in his place. Elena's father, played by Christopher McDonald although unfortunately not playing an older and more humble Shooter McGavin, has enough power and influence to allow his head of security Lucello ( Lee Tergesen) put a team together to storm The Collectors lair with Arkin leading the way. Things go about as smoothly as you would expect.
The rest of the cast is decent enough despite the usual problems with these movies since half of these characters are around simply to be cannon fodder (including Andre Royo aka Bubbles from The Wire who I think only has a six lines of dialogue, which is maddening) but for the main cast there's enough shading to at least give your reasons to root for them to survive. I especially enjoyed Fitzpatrick as she gave her character a kind of tough grace which makes you completely believe she would have saved her own damn self even if there wasn't a team of hardened mercenaries trying to save her.
The movie as a whole is fine, with director Marcus Dunstan taking a lot of cues from the Saw franchise (the latter half of which he had a direct hand in creating) with an emphasis on death traps that vary between realistically clever to borderline ridiculous but also adding some action movie flow to keep the whole thing moving at a pretty decent clip. I also cant help but admire the fact that there's really no interest in answering who The collector actually is, who is basically presented as a what-if of Batman as serial killer whose secret lair is basically Arkham Asylum. There's no rhyme or reason to why he does what he does and that embracement of mystery and total disregard for some big reveal is pretty refreshing.
Also, this flick has the goriest rave scene I've seen since Blade. So thats something I guess.