Screamfest LA kicked off its 12th annual reign of terror on the movie world Friday night with a screening of Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton’s The Collection, the eagerly anticipated sequel to the 2009 cult hit The Collector, starring Josh Stewart.

Emma Fitzpatrick plays Elena, a hearing-impaired girl abducted from a rave by The Collector and taken to an abandoned, but booby-trapped hotel. Stewart reprises his role as Arkin, the ex-con-turned-hero, now forced to join a group of mercenaries hired by the missing girl’s father to find her.

The film is brutal, violent fun —a stylish tour-de-blunt-force guaranteed to thrill Collector fans while drawing in new ones. Dunstan, directing from a script he co-wrote with Melton, keeps the cat-and-mouse intensity of the original, but amps up the action with outrageous new death traps, zombified junkies and creepy new revelations.

The Collector & Erin Way

The Collection begins with Elena and her friends dancing the night away at an underground rave filled with beautiful semi-naked young people. Things get ugly when Elena finds her boyfriend making out with a hot blonde on the dance floor. She decks him and runs off upset, ducking into a room that holds a familiar looking chest.

Arkin, last seen abducted by The Collector in the original film, rolls out of the box—bloodied and bound—when Elena unfastens its latch, triggering a series of elaborate traps inside the club that allow for the bloodiest opening mass murder scene since 2002’s Ghost Ship.

Arkin escapes, but leaves Elena behind. She’s taken to the abandoned hotel where The Collector has set up shop to work on a gruesome project. While not a lot is revealed about The Collector, enough chilling background seeds have been planted to ensure the character’s transformation into a franchise-worthy villain.

Man's Worst Friend

The white-knuckle thrills continue as Arkin and a team of mercs, led by Elena’s guardian Lucello (Lee Tergesen), break into the hotel  in search of Elena, who has already managed to get away from The Collector and is roaming the halls with a creepy-cute captive named Abby (Erin Way), The Collector’s pet.

The Collection displays in theaters on Nov. 30.