Midnight Meat Train

Definitely not what I'd call a good film. However there are quite a few good things about it. Unfortunately, some things in the film that should be pretty straightforward, defy basic logic. There is a lack of focus to authenticity here at times, or just plain lazy filmmaking in certain parts that take away from the production. Overall though, the film is very watchable, and many horror fans will likely find enough good things in it to at least be mildly satisfied when it's all said and done. There are some good ideas and visuals in this film at times. The story and vision here could've worked even better, that is if the screenplay and finished product was just a little more thoughtful overall. 6/10.

I would like to start off saying, it is a bit upsetting that this movie has been undersold. I went into this movie know a it was based on a short story, but I had not read it nor heard anything about it.

The acting was very good Overall from a semi-star cast. Bradley Cooper did a great job, as did Leslie Bibb. Vinnie Jones did a good job by pulling off the Sphynx-like roll from Gone in 60 Seconds. He was a calm, quiet collected man who just looks like a natural born killer. I was wondering why Brooke Shields name did not come up or was used to sell this movie, but found out she is just a minor roll in the movie. Peter Jacobson (one of the new members of Dr. House) has a small roll in the movie as a bit of comic relief.

The plot line, I am saying this without reading the book, was decent, but there were times I feel the viewer had to make jumps with what was going on. I won't give away anything in the movie, but it just seemed like there were times that a whole scene took place that was a bit unnecessary, though they may have been thrown in as red herons. The movie is rather straight forward and basic, but it is still able to keep you pulled in. I was kept excited throughout the whole movie until the end and the plot twist occurs.

The violence/blood did not seem over the top for what was occurring. Never was there a part that someone spurted massive amount of blood out of a paper cut. The violence was a bit disturbing, and there were a couple dismemberment/decapitation scenes.

After watching this movie, I felt that this could become another gore cult classic with such as Dead or Alive. Also, if this was well publicized and launched in more theaters, I think it would have easily outsold The Happening and The Strangers, the biggest horror flicks of the summer.

There's something deeply disturbing about the 'show biz' politics and intrigues that managed to exile such a well made film to the 'dollar theaters'. On the other hand, horror purists of all calibre will probably get a kick out of seeing the visceral shocks and convoluted twists Riuhei Kitamura and Clibe Barker have prepared for our enjoyment in the environment of a seedy, rundown theater. If the disturbed denizens of 42nd Street have all but disappeared, scared away by the gloss and glitz of the cineplex and the popcorn munching crowd that inhabits it, perhaps the final bastion of grindhouse cinema can be found in watching a brutal, bloody shock horror film in an empty theater with row upon row of sticky floor and no one but a handful of genre enthusiasts there with you.

There's also something deeply disturbing about the mentality of the movie-watching public. That a, by the look of it, worse sequel (and I'll be surprised if it's any better than its predecessors) will gross more than MMT, simply because of a household franchise name, a shot of a tape player and someone musing off screen "I want to play a game...", seems to confirm UK grinders Napalm Death motto "the public gets what the public doesn't want".

That's not to say that MMT is an excellent horror flick. No, far from it. But it does exactly what it says on the tin and then some. If the pace slackens a bit after the balls-to-the-wall pummeling that is the first half hour, it is salvaged by Kitamura's (intentional or not) decision to channel the dark, neon-noir of David Fincher.

If the CGI blood is a sign of things to come in the field of mainstream American horror or a leftover from Kitamura's days in Japan, that's for him to know. What Kitamura brings in his cinematic baggage however is his distinct stylistic hallmarks - when the camera repeatedly spins around a train wagon in motion, one will be hard pressed not to recall a similar rotating camera trick from AZUMI. A long overhead crane shot seems to combine the off-kilter axis games of Argento with Tarantino's now-famous crane shot in KILL BILL.

If some people complain that the editing and style appear to be too music video-ish, I will respectfully disagree and point them in the direction of such atrocities as DOOMSDAY and HELL RIDE. Kitamura at least understands rhythm.

The 'novelty' of staging a slasher in a subway train is what gives MMT the first push. The other is the inspired casting choice of having Vinnie "Mean Machine" Jones in the role of the baddie. The third is the distinctly Clive Barker-ish twist that ends the film - not exactly my cup but that's because my sensibilities are totally different from Barker's.

MMT might never quite reach its full potential story-wise, but it's fast-paced and brutal, exactly what the title promises. 7.5/10

Clive Barker's more sanguinary inclinations are paid tribute here through a hulking golem, a malevolent meat merchant in his dapper best, named Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) who smashes, eviscerates and cleaves through unsuspecting commuters on the last train home. Adapted from Barker's seminal anthology, "Books of Blood", the similarly named "The Midnight Meat Train" is more than just an opportunity for some sophomoric snickering over its title but one of Barker's most revered short stories about a supernatural serial killer that ekes out fascination, fear and obsession from a lone photographer, Leon Kaufman (Bradley Cooper) stumbling upon the butcher's late night deliveries.

Director Ryuhei Kitamura (of "Versus" and "Azumi" fame) offers up one of the year's most brutally alluring gore fests in his American debut. With the gritty and detailed hard-edge of early 70s horror films (why, hello there Lucio Fulci!), his flair for CGI augmented visuals and the intense seduction of experimental camera-work in a cinematic environment so increasingly sanitised of actual visceral terror, Kitamura refreshes the genre's ability to unsettle and provoke audiences and jolt jaded horror enthusiasts out of their PG-13 apathy.

Kitamura works with a modest but shrewd sense of space in the decaying subway, the claustrophobic train and the creeping gloom of the city. There's a certain simpatico between Barker's distinctive tone and Kitamura's balls-to-the-wall film-making that compliments each other to the benefit of the film's atmospheric resilience. The unvarnished horrors cooked down deep in the gallows of the tunnels, plunged into darkness form the basis of Kaufman's terrible fixation on the disappearing passengers and that indescribably malicious man who stalks the shadows. Mahogany is the film's myth, the legend of The Butcher. Prepossessing the exactitude of traits essential to the character, Jones has the nasty glint in the eye, the mysterious swagger of indestructibility and the imperative of consuming evil, as well as having the benefit of looking like the quiet guy in the corner of the bar who could take out an entire gang of hoodlums without spilling his drink.

Kitamura's modulation of the material's emotional stakes and his slow-burn style of ratcheting up tension gives the story further layers to plunge into, not withstanding Cooper's unlikely presence as the film's corruptible protagonist. Jeff Buhler's screenplay from Barker's 25-year-old story is uneven at times but keeps an atmospheric dread of hopelessness. Supporting characters include Kaufman's wife (Leslie Bibb), a counterpoint to the man's wavering sanity and a threadbare characterisation of his good-humoured pal Jurgis (Roger Bart) who stands to represent Kaufman's humanity. But even if these emotional contrasts don't work, the film itself is a tidy and effective meta-slasher that resonates beyond corporeal carnage. Kitamura's subtextual ingenuity is shown through macabre imagery of animal carcasses hanging off meat hooks as Mahogany tenderises, disembowels and stores his victims just like the morsels of flesh they are.

Clive Barker's fantastical and mad blend of visceral shocks and profoundly unsettling explorations of worlds coexisting and buried deep within the one we think we understand has become an important component of our contemporary literary and filmic universes. While "The Midnight Meat Train" never hits the spasms of metaphysical despairs in "Hellraiser" or the diabolical mind-warps of "Candyman", this is forthright horror – simple, powerful and unadulterated.

Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) is big bad butcher, whose weapon of choice is a mallet and an ice hook. Day after day, night after night he takes the 2 am train to hell, where unsuspecting passengers are massacred and then hung up like dead meat.

Leon (Bradley Cooper) is an up and coming photograph, who is trying to make it critically, but so far his work has been unable to break it. His biggest fan and believer is his beautiful fiancée Maya (Leslie Bibb). One chance session in the subway changes the direction of his life. First he photographs a model being harassed by some thugs and after saving her from them takes a picture of her entering the 2 am train...

Clive Barker has really been prolific with all the horror he has caused come to life on the big screen. It is enough to mention that his stories was the backbone of such classics as Hellraiser or Candyman. That said he has also been raped as a horror writer with atrocities such as Rawhead Rex.

This movie doesn't hit the highs or the lows, but I must say it was pretty decent and definitely one of the best genre movies I have seen lately. No matter has essentially idiotic the plot I have to say it did cut loose of the copycat phase in horror cinema we are currently at. It had a certain freshness to it not only in the way it was told, but also in subject matter itself. I won't go as far as to say it was breakthrough original, but it was darn intriguing all the way through.

I normally rate a good horror movie based on gut feeling. The moment you can't wait to know what will happen at the end of the movie or in the next scene for that matter and at the same time you have to fight with yourself to continue watching - that lets you know this horror flick is actually pretty good.

Definitely full of flaws and the graphic gore isn't my kind of horror meal. Acting was great and tech credits all round were superb. Ryûhei Kitamura deserves accolades for this horror movie. Maybe not a classic, but given the far fetched material he had to work with it is a triumph.