The movie opens with a couple drunkenly returning home from a night out.
When they go upstairs, they discover a sketchy box sitting in their bedroom along with a note,
that says “for the collection.” The box rattles, piquing the husband’s interest.
Despite the wife’s objections, the husband Larry decides to open the box.
On the next scene, we get introduced to Arkin, a handyman hired to fix up
a fancy Victorian house that belongs to a wealthy man named Michael Chase,
wherein he lives with his wife Victoria Chase and their daughters, Jill and Hannah.
While Arkin is working, Hannah excitedly walks up to him and asks him to play tea party with her.
However, not long after Arkin sits down with her, he sees this:
Just in time, Michael Chase walks in and interrupts them. Arkin who realizes he’s
overstepping decides to excuse himself, and exits the house to resume his work.
When he’s taking a smoke break later, Michael Chase’s teenage daughter,
Jill, walks up to him and makes small talk with him before climbing back inside her house.
Jill then meets her mom, and throws a teenage tantrum at her mother for
making her come with on a family vacation. After Arkin gets off work, he goes to visit
his daughter, Cindy, and his wife, Lisa. There we learn that Lisa is being sought
after by loan sharks, and the money Arkin just made is not nearly enough to repay her debts.
Arkin promises he’ll get her the money tonight, and this is where the story gets exciting.
Arkin goes to see a man named Roy, and based on their conversation, we learn that Arkin is
an ex-convict who actually has been planning to rob the Chase family’s house for some time,
meanwhile Roy is also an ex-convict, who Arkin owes for doing a solid when they were behind bars. He
tells Roy that he has located the Chase family’s safe, and that he wants to rob the house tonight.
Arkin agrees to split their earnings by 60-40 and heads straight to the Chase family residence.
When Arkin sneaks his way to the vast yard of the Chase’s residence, things don't look good for him;
as a dog suddenly appears and lunges at him. The guard dog makes him stagger back a little,
but he resumes his mission and proceeds to the front door.
Arkin makes his way inside and finds the house eerily quiet.
He then finds the family’s safe and uses his expertise to unlock it. However, he is interrupted when he
hears footsteps heading upstairs. Thinking it must be one of the Chases, Arkin hides inside a room.
But we can see that there's another figure inside the house looking around. When the figure passes by him,
he slips his way back downstairs and attempts to exit the house, but finds the door locked.
Arkin hides some more and returns upstairs once the masked man who from this point on we shall
refer to as The Collector enters the basement. While Arkin continues trying to unlock the safe,
screams can be heard through the vents.
The cries and screams don’t go unnoticed by Arkin.
He then moves to hide in a closet once more, right when he stumbles upon a bloody and
badly injured Michael Chase. Thinking that it was Arkin who did this to him,
he reaches for the nearest weapon, but then some sort of weird, confusing chain reaction happens.
Michael gets caught on a trap line apparently installed inside the house and gets dragged away,
before falling down to the floor. As if on cue, The Collector appears and
drags him away. Back upstairs, Arkin comes out of hiding and discovers a thunderstorm outside.
Now knowing something very bad is going on, Arkin reaches for the phone but soon winces in pain,
when he realizes that nails are now embedded on the ear rest. He tries pushing his hand through
a gap on a boarded window but as it turns out, a makeshift razor blades trapped have been installed
on it. We can now conclude that dangerous traps have been meticulously placed all over the house.
Arkin then begins hearing footsteps in the distance, so he goes to hide inside
the kid’s room. After the coast is clear, he heads downstairs, where finds a set of
blades installed on a fallen chandelier, but he is unable to take the blade for himself.
He tries to open a window, but finds that yet another trap is wired to it.
Arkin fearfully ventures around the house some more, and accidentally walks into a set
of wires that are splayed right in front of him, making it impossible for him to reach the door.
He retreats and enters another room with bear traps laid all over the floor.
He manages to evade them, and avoids another trip wire. He then finds another set of stairs
but this one has nails sticking out of them. Shortly after, Arkin hears The Collector
step downstairs, and hurriedly walks through the nearest unlocked door,
which leads him to the basement. He carefully navigates his way in the dark, until this happens:
Arkin comes face-to-face with a horribly injured Michael Chase who is now strapped to a chair.
Arkin tries to calm him down and tells him that he didn’t do this and that he now wants
to help. Michael then tells Arkin to find his wife and youngest child Hannah, and to retrieve
a gun stored inside a safe in the main bedroom. After learning the password, Arkin finds Michael’s
wife Victoria inside the basement’s bathroom. He takes her gag off and is about to take off the
tape covering her eyes but finds that it is sealed with some sort of needles piercing her skin.
She tells him that her daughter Hannah is still hiding somewhere and the psycho hasn’t
gotten to her yet. Hearing this, Arkin promises to find Hannah and tells her to scream as loud as she can to
draw The Collector’s attention so that he may slip out of the basement unnoticed.
The plan worked. As The Collector steps downstairs, Arkin manages slips back to
the first floor unnoticed. While Arkin rushes to look for little Hannah, The Collector punishes
Victoria for screaming by maiming her tongue with pliers. Afterwards, he moves to torture Michael.
Upstairs, Arkin returns to the very safe he tried to unlock earlier and finally opens it now.
He takes the guns inside as well as the pricey gemstone he initially came to steal.
But because the movie has to keep going, the gun isn’t loaded and Arkin has no idea where to find
the bullets. As he searches for them, he begins hearing noises coming from the closet. Thinking
it might be Hannah, he opens it, only to find the red box we saw in the beginning of the movie.
It turns out to be Larry, the guy from the beginning of the movie. He tells Arkin that The Collector
maims people and collects them alive, and only kills those he doesn’t want. Also apparently,
The Collector only lets one person stay alive during every house invasion.
Larry then begins acting shrieking and acting insane, so Arkin tucks him back inside the box.
He returns to the hall and comes across an open window. Taken over by excitement, he heads
straight towards it, but as it turns out, The Collector has installed a trap all over the floor,
and we even see the family’s house cat trapped in the sticky, corrosive yellow goo. Arkin takes his
shoes off and jumps onto the bed, before helping the cat escape. He tosses the cat to the window,
but there is a trap set on the open window, which kills the cat instantly.
All the commotion in the room attracts The Collector’s attention, so he rushes upstairs
to ambush, while Arkin quickly throws magazines over his stuck shoes and hides.
Once The Collector leaves, Arkin sneaks back downstairs and witnesses a gruesome sight: Michael
has been gutted to death. He then moves to the other room and frees Victoria with a bobby pin,
while claiming that he doesn’t think Hannah is in the house because he
looked everywhere but couldn’t find her. Arkin then instructs Victoria to follow
him and keep her eyes on his back the whole time and not make a sound, but upon seeing
the sight of her dead husband, Victoria loses it. She screams in panic and runs upstairs.
The Collector stabs her repeatedly before going downstairs. Arkin hides under the desk and rushes
back upstairs.
The Collector then drags the barely conscious Victoria back inside the bathroom.
Now alone with the psychotic masked man, he cruelly sews Victoria’s lips shut,
while Arkin shakenly tries to break out through the boarded window.
Right then, Jill arrives back home with her boyfriend. The teens are clearly unaware
of the danger lurking inside the house and proceed to spend time hooking up in the house.
However, when the two are passionately making out, this happens:
The boyfriend tries facing off against our homeboy psycho but of course ends up
losing. He gets cornered and pushed into the one room full of bear traps and dies.
Unfortunately, Jill gets apprehended by The Collector not long after,
making her dial 911 in panic. Arkin comes to her rescue once coast is clear,
but Jill starts panicking right after he releases her. She ends up recklessly
moving about the house, which gets her killed thanks to the many traps around.
Having had enough of this, Arkin finally finds his way outside the house and is seriously about
to leave the premises, but stops upon seeing a figure on one of the mansion’s
windows who is none other than little Hannah.
Not entirely heartless, Arkin returns inside to save the child,
who is now in danger that the masked psycho has discovered her whereabouts.
Arkin manages to take her with him and the two find shelter inside a room,
while the psycho goes after them. Seeing that the room has a TV and an aquarium,
an idea spurs in his mind. Once The Collector finally breaks in,
it appears that The Collector has Larry with him, and instead pushes him to the floor,
which electrocutes him to death.
Like a ninja, The Collector proceeds to throw blades at Arkin
who also begins dodging the blades like an immortal character. Arkin takes Hannah with
him and escapes to a different room, wherein he somehow accidentally gets pierced in the ear with
a fish hook.
Arkin then squeezes Hannah through a small opening, while The Collector finally breaks
through the door and scuffles with Arkin.
Arkin manages to see the guy's face before passing out.
He then gets taken to the basement, handcuffed,
and his movements limited by a series of fish hooks pierced into his hands and back.
The Collector forcibly takes out one of his teeth, and gets distracted when he hears a
noise in the background. As it turns out, Hannah is in the room with them. To keep
The Collector from getting to Hannah, Arkin taunts him, which only earns him more pain.
Later on, a police officer arrives and proceeds to look through the window, wherein he finds the
boyfriend’s mangled dead body. Not long after, he comes face to face with our homeboy masked psycho.
Unfortunately, the dog from the beginning of the film shows up again and rips the officer’s throat.
Back to the basement, Arkin painfully frees himself.
He learns that The Collector has rigged a set of explosives in the basement,
and gets ready to escape with Hannah. They tie themselves to each other
and proceed to squeeze through the dumbwaiter while The Collector comes after them with his dog.
Crafty and fast-thinking, Arkin burns a few papers in the trashcan and dumps the
burning paper on the dog.
He then walks up to the psycho and dumps the dead dog on him.
Arkin faces off once again against the masked psycho,
and manages to gain the upper hand this time.
Arkin and Hannah now rush to the locked door
and attempts to open it but soon realize that the key is broken.
Meanwhile, The Collector gets back up, and begins maniacally shooting his shotgun at the door.
The Collector then finds them, but it's just a reflection of them in the mirror,
and Arkin releases the trap.
Now that the psycho is injured and the door is broken,
Arkin and Hannah make their way to freedom.
They finally come across the rushing police cars, but Arkin gets run over by one of them.
While Arkin slowly loses consciousness, he sees the psycho is about to get the girl,
but then turns into the police. Luckily, he is just hallucinating.
Around them, medics and police come to their aid and take them to safety.
But just as we thought all is well, this happens:
Later on, Arkin gets questioned by a police
officer about the identity of The Collector. As it turns out, Arkin recognized the guy
as one of the exterminators summoned to the Chase’s residence earlier that day.
As Arkin gets taken away by the ambulance, we learn that he at least managed to steal the
gemstone from the family’s safe after all. But the story won't end in this simple way.
As expected, the crash was caused by The Collector,
and the two once again scuffle on the ground. The Collector gains the upper hand
and stores Arkin into the box as his latest collection.
In fact, the movie actually doesn't end here as I'll recap the sequel in the next video.