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The Collector's Rave Massacre was the mass murder of hundreds of people at an underground rave by the serial killer known as the Collector. Through a series of elaborate traps, most famously a combine harvester, he murdered 262 people - nearly everyone in attendance - before abducting one of the only survivors, Elena Peters, for his collection. The rave massacre is the opening scene and inciting event for the 2012 horror film The Collection, the sequel to the 2009 film The Collector.
History[]
Background[]
The Collector was already a prolific serial killer before the massacre. His modus operandi consisting of breaking into homes, rigging them with deadly traps, torturing most of the family to death, then finally "collecting" the sole survivor for imprisonment and torture before destroying the crime scene and escaping. During one such attack, he encountered thief Arkin O'Brien, who had coincidentally broken into the same home. While most of the family was killed, Arkin managed to save the youngest daughter, Hannah, before being collected himself. Because of Hannah's escape, law enforcement and the public learned about the Collector for the first time.
For a few weeks after this attack, the Collector worked on rigging a warehouse used as an illegal nightclub with an arsenal of deadly traps, hoping to kill hundreds in one attack. The traps were designed to turn the rave into an inescapable bloodbath, where the Collector could collect one victim at his leisure and ensure everyone else was killed. Probably on the day of the massacre, the Collector snuck a captive Arkin into the club inside a trunk and set the traps to activate as soon as the trunk was opened, while the Collector waited in the club's rafters to watch the carnage.
Massacre[]
On the night of the attack, Elena Peters visited the club with her friends Missy and Josh. On the dance floor, she caught her boyfriend Brian cheating on her and stormed off into a side room, where she found Arkin's trunk. Hearing him inside the trunk, she opened it to let him out.
Opening the trunk set off an elaborate chain of events to turn the rave into a killing pen. First, a crossbow in a vent fired a bolt at Elena and Arkin, which missed them but itself activated other devices. The crossbow's firing activated both a combine harvester hidden in the ceiling and another mechanism that locked the nightclub's doors, sealing off all escape. The combine harvester then lowered from the ceiling and swept across the densely packed dance floor at about chest height, killing nearly everyone there by slashing apart their heads and torsos before retracting back into the ceiling. Among those killed was Josh. Brian, who laid down flat to avoid the blades, was apparently the only person to survive without fleeing the dance floor, though one of his fingers was sheared off.
The few people who escaped the dance floor faced two possible paths, both of which were rigged with traps. One hallway, leading to an upper-story window, was laced with tripwires that when tripped would trigger enormous machete blades to slash out of the walls and strike the victims' necks and torsos. Brian and eight others were killed trying to navigate this hallway. Another hallway led into a pen that shut victims in with grates before crushing them with a hydraulic press. Rather than being triggered by its victims, this trap was manually activated by the Collector, who stood above the trap and sprung it once he thought it full enough. He then crushed all those inside with the press, including Missy.
The only two survivors were Elena and Arkin. Arkin managed to navigate the tripwires and reach the window, but was unable to rescue Elena, who was abducted by the Collector. Arkin escaped by using Brian's corpse to cushion his fall when he jumped out the window, while the Collector drove off in a van with the captive Elena.
Aftermath[]
While at the hospital, Arkin was approached by Lucello, a mercenary employed by Elena's wealthy father. Lucello offered to expunge Arkin's criminal record if he helped Lucello's mercenary team rescue Elena and kill the Collector. Together they raided the Collector's lair, the Hotel Argento. While Arkin managed to survive and rescue Elena, the entire mercenary team and many of the Collector's captives were killed, and the Collector himself escaped.
Some time later, Arkin tracked the Collector to his home and abducted him with the intent of torturing and killing him in revenge for his many atrocities.
Casualties[]
A total of 262 people were killed in the Collector's rave massacre. 236 people were killed by the combine harvester on the dance floor, seventeen by the hydraulic press, and nine by the tripwire-activated machetes. The only named characters to die are Josh, Brian, and Missy.
The death toll is never stated in the movie, but Marcus Dunstan has confirmed the death toll of 236 for the combine harvester scene.
Trivia[]
- The rave massacre was conceived as a way to get around a request by the movie's financiers for a younger cast of characters than that of The Collector. The director and writers technically met this request with the characters introduced at the rave, only to immediately kill off all of them except for Elena.
- The combine harvester portion of the massacre is the most famous scene of The Collection, and possibly of both Collector movies.