Collar (2014) (DVD Review)
Directed By: Ryan Nicholson
Starring: Nick Principe, Momona Komagata, Ronald Patrick Thompson,
Rated: UR/Region: 0/Widescreen/Number of disc: 1
Available from Unearthed Films
A rookie cop starts her shift like any other but soon it will all change for the worse. A derelict with a reputation of satanic violence, attacks the officer and collars her with a dog leash which is just the start of his abusive ritual.
I’m a fan of Ryan Nicholson fan at heart. I loved Gutterballs, I liked The Bleeding Lady, and that is just to name a few. I think what they really had going for them was the fact they had well established characters that seemed important from the jump resulting in you having something to latch on to with in the madness that is a Ryan Nicholson film. Collar has the extreme thing down, but I feel the story is a bit weak and leaves much on the table. Our best established character is our residential homeless behemoth of a man named, Massive. We see he has a dark past and he does some very terrible things, but there seems to be things dropped that never fully get examined because we waste time on a couple of very annoying characters who are filming him do bad things among other things. Our leading lady seems to be a cop Massive kidnaps, but not much is done with her and at the end of the day an apparent side character hooker seems to be just as important to the story if not more and I’d not care if her importance was really established more before.
It could be seen as nitpicking, but the characters and their order/importance seem to really bug me and the blood and gore is there and nearly covers up the plot issues, but not enough for me not to notice. Still, the gore is REALLY good as it always is when it comes to a Nicholson film. So if you just want that you got that. I’ll praise that because it needs praised. There is too much CGI these days and this is great to see. I will again stress that I feel the character of Massive is great and could have really been used a bit better overall. When the acting is on here it is really on, but when it isn’t it is pretty awful. That all adds up to a mixed bag for Collar. This is a movie that needed a better plot or perhaps more established and better churned out characters, but did give us nudity, gore, and a really cool but misused monster of a man causing mayhem. I won’t say you won’t get some enjoyment out of it, but it isn’t Nicholson’s best work.
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