There’s something deeply disturbing about anyone who collects anything for fun. Let’s face it, could you really put your trust in someone’s mental state if you knew that they had over 300 tea towels (a mix of traditional and novelty) on display in their home? Or one of the largest collections of beer tankards outside of Germany? At least you know where you stand with a person who collects humans for fun: that’s about as far away from them as possible.

Arkin (Josh Stewart) is a very handy handyman. He’s so handy in fact that he used to be a thief. But not anymore. No sir. Strictly on the straight and narrow for handy Arkin. That is until his ex-wife struggles to meet the repayments on a dodgy loan she accepted, which means that both her and their daughter will be in a spot of bother if it isn’t paid off by midnight.

This obviously puts Arkin in a bit of a predicament. He has no money of his own so feels the need to put his thief hat (well, more of a stocking really) back on again.

As luck would have it though, the family who are currently hiring him for his handiness are loaded, and even have a gem the size of a fist in their safe. And Arkin must have some Irish blood in him as the family are also off on holiday, meaning the house will be entirely empty. How lucky is that?

So, with his freshly laundered thief outfit, he breaks into the family’s house in the dead of night. But as he’s just about to crack open the safe and make off with the loot, he realises that he’s not alone in the house. And whoever this mysterious masked intruder is, it appears that he very much wants Arkin to hang out a while...

Excuse me, sir, but do you have another red felt-tip pen? Mine appears to have exploded.

Considering this comes from the soulless scribes behind Saw IV and its subsequent dire sequels, hopes of this feature being anything other than mildly mediocre (which really should be used on film posters) are slim.

Somehow though, its debut director (and co-writer) Marcus Dunstan has had a good stab at doing something a little bit different with the horror genre. The film impresses visually from the off, with a very grainy, unpolished look about it. It’s a bit on the dirty side, giving it a slight feel of one of those video nasties from the eighties. With most of the action taking place in the one location, it’s pretty much a horror Home (Almost) Alone.

Stewart, who has made a ‘guest appearance’ in almost every US drama known to man in the last few years, finally gets a lead role. But with most flicks of this type, the real star of the film is the badass baddie: in this case, the Collector himself. He’s quite old school in the fact that he doesn’t say a word throughout – not that the gimp mask he wears is that inducive to moments of chat. With no back story however, there’s nothing there to flesh out his motives, so he just comes off as some weird sicko. There’s no chance of him being inducted into the horror hall of fame alongside the likes of Freddy, Jason etc anytime soon then.

The real problem however is its story. Even if you can just accept that the Collector simply likes to collect victims for the hell of it, the extreme lengths he goes to don’t really add up. When we first meet him, he already has most of the household as part of his collection; but as we look around the house, it has more booby traps than a road runner cartoon. Which begs the question, if he easily subdued most of the family, why go to such extraordinary lengths all around the house? Also, when did he find the time to set up so many elaborate traps? The room full of bear traps would have taken the best part of an afternoon surely?

And considering that Dunstan and his fellow Saw writer Patrick Melton, there’s no shock that the script is utter tripe. It takes its absurdity very seriously, which doesn’t help the film’s cause.

Where their Saw history does come into play however, is in the execution of the set pieces. It has inherited that horror franchise’s back-to-basics methods of dishing out the pain; there’s a simplicity in the B & Q approach to torture, with nails, razor blades, chains etc being used effectively. And yet their creative use here causes some truly gory moments. And it’s these that lift The Collector just ever so slightly into a loftier level within the pantheon of pain.

If you can ignore its obvious flaws, and you’re a fan of horror at its goriest, then this is definitely one for your collection.