It’s almost February and some really great movies are hitting store shelves this week for the first time and for the first time on Blu-ray. This week’s releases include This Is It, Surrogates, Whip It, Saw IV, the complete run of NBC’s canceled-too-soon Southland and the Blu-ray release of Wim Wenders’ classic Paris, Texas with Nastassja Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton. (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

Atonement ~ James McAvoy (Blu-ray)

Bright Star ~ Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw (Blu-ray and DVD)

Fame (1980) ~ Irene Cara (Blu-ray)

Give ‘Em Hell Malone ~ Doug Hutchison, Thomas Jane (Blu-ray and DVD)

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell ~ Matt Czuchry, Geoff Stults (Blu-ray and DVD)

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In spite of its ties to the Saw franchise, The Collector manages to, at points, rise above its torture porn roots and deliver a mostly solid 85 minutes of horror, suspense, action and, for the most part, good performances. The film, written by Saw IV, V and VI scribes Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton and directed by Dunstan, follows the same basic formula of the Saw films where a devious and virtually unstoppable villain, in this case The Collector instead of Saw’s Jigsaw, devises many ingenious, outlandish and over-the-top ways to kill the various members of the cast. Taken as only that, the film would most likely be relegated to obscurity very soon after watching it.

The conceit that saves The Collector from being regarded as just another Saw knockoff is the fact that the hero, capability played by Josh Stewart, is actually a criminal who breaks into a house where The Collector has already taken up residence and is in mid-torture of the wealthy family who resides there. Once inside, the criminal discovers The Collector’s crimes, is derailed from his purpose in the house to steal a gem to pay his wife’s gambling debts, and must become the reluctant hero. Instead of robbing the family, he must instead rescue them and get them, and himself, out of the house alive. This criminal versus killer concept is the main redeeming quality of the film.

Developing his character, giving him something to fight for and turning him into the hero enables the audience to have an interest in if he lives or dies and, more importantly, if he can save the family and their young daughter from the hands of The Collector and his box. This helps the film by being just original and different enough from other films like it to elevate it above the normal fare associated with this genre. However, as interesting as the particular conceit is, it doesn’t help the film quite enough and as such we are still treated to several scenes of torture and contrived situations which could have been lifted out of most other Saw films or various other cogs in the torture porn machine.

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