Train

Americans go on a train in Europe that ends up being their last ride.

That's this film summed up in one sentence, one boring sentence that actually is more entertaining than the film. This is Hostel meets Turistas on a train. How many times have we seen good-looking Americans (ugly ones never travel) that somehow get caught up in some sick plot about killing for for money, organ harvesting, teaching lessons, etc. These films seem like ANTI-TRAVEL ads, if you leave the states, you're going to die.

The film doesn't bother with a plot, it simply needs to get characters for the slaughter in specific locations so bad guys can do harmful things to them. Films like these are basically an excuse to showcase gore, just like a film such as 2012 is made to showcase special effects. So how do you judge a film that is simply about cutting people up? You judge it on how well they accomplish that, how creative it can be and if it made you squirm. Does Train do any of these things?

Well, characters are beaten, urinated on, cut open, stabbed, castrated, etc. So there is no real creativity going on here. People are simply chained up and then cut open for the most part. Train manages to fall into the horror clichés that have plagued the genre like a sickness. Let's take a look:

1. Characters have a chance to escape, but don't? Check. 2. Characters have a weapon, drop it and leave it instead of using it? Check. 3. Characters give away passports/I.D. to strangers in other country just because? Check. 4. Characters go back to save someone who cannot be saved? Check. 5. Characters have opportunity to kill attacker, but instead choose to simply injure then run away? CHECK.

This film had me rolling my eyes so much I hurt my eyeballs.

Train is a flick you can miss, it adds nothing to the genre in terms of suspense, thrills, gore, entertainment, anything. It will anger you, frustrate you, cause you to rip your hair out. All these things and more!!!!

When Hostel was released I found it to be an interesting twist on the likes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Hills Have Eyes, playing on the fear of being outside one's normal environment, but exchanging the backwoods for Eastern Europe. Even back then, however, I noted the American-centricity of the film.

Since then we have had Hostel II, Turistas (known as Paradise Lost here in the UK), and now we have Train- another in this unfortunate sub genre that shouldn't be called Torture Porn, but rather "Don't be Leavin' America!" Because yet again those poor beautiful Abercrombie And Fitch mannequins are under threat by Eastern Euopeans who want to take their organs.

A film I recently enjoyed was Saw VI. Yes- seriously. The sixth part in a series of horror films and it still felt fresher than this film. Why? Probably because it quite cleverly, highlighted the brutality inherent in the medical insurance system of care in the US, and selfishness of banks practically handing out risky loans that has led us to this economic crisis. This was a horror film brave enough to assess America's own problems.

In contrast films such as Train are contemptuous of all things non- American. It makes me wonder about the the directors of these movies- did they take their middle-American rite-of-passage trip to Europe as students- backpack around? At what point did they decide to cinematically urinate on the countries they visited? The film itself is bland, feels cheap and thinks revealing a character's pierced nipples counts as character development. Thora Birch looks annoyed at having signed on- I'm pretty sure there are moments her face screams "I was once in American Beauty." And let's be grateful this film was about Eastern Europeans stealing organs, because if it was about bottling charisma or likability, no one would have died.

At the beginning of the film i felt like i had seen it a dozen times before, the usual ensemble of college students and a couple of teachers...you know!

However within a very short space of time i was drawn into the storyline of the film, and there actually is a plot to follow!

I hadn't read anything about the film before i watched it so spent most off the film saying "No way!" mostly quite shocked at the content of the film and the implications of the plot...

I don't want to write any spoilers so let me say that it is a thriller/horror well worth seeing and anyone who liked a film like Hostel will like this one too and enjoy it...i did:-)

Torture porn is a really overused description, one that tends to be slapped onto anything with a bit of blood and guts which the reviewer didn't like very much. Hostel, for example, is nothing like it; it has a storyline, characters, even a bit of subtext going on there. Real porn is where the splatter has no reason to exist, there are no actual characters, and no plot other than to get us from one splatter scene to the next. Train is genuine torture porn.

Oh, sure, there is an attempt at a plot, but not one that makes any sense. Organ harvesters - on a train? Rumbling through the middle of nowhere, taking out bits of bodies by yanking at them until the connecting tissue snaps? Harvesting tongues, penises, and other not-exactly-transplantable organs? The whole movie is just an excuse to show some graphic, very nasty scenes of dismemberment, shot in leering close-up, and anything else - character, plot, dialogue - is perfunctory at best. The script feels like it was written on the back of a cigarette packet, no one behaves in a remotely sensible way - 'oh look, here's a locked door with copious blood-stains in front of it, let's find out what's behind it by STEPPING OUT OF A MOVING TRAIN AND SMASHING A WINDOW FROM THE OUTSIDE. What school do these kids go to, James Bond High School? Let me say again - I've got no objection to graphic splatter, so long as there's some point to it. If there's no worthwhile story, no reason for the gore to exist, you have porn. This movie, in other words. A nasty, degrading experience made by stupid people who probably think they're pushing some boundary or other. You're not, guys. You're just stringing together a bunch of random scenes of people being chopped up. Well done.

Just one thing before I go - what the hell happened to Thora Birch? Between this and Deadline (also unbelievably awful, though with less people having their skin cut off), is she aiming to be the new Cuba Gooding Jr or something? Please, Thora, fire your agent and start doing actual movies again. Pretty please?

I probably should have known this was going to be, or at least akin to being, "torture porn", or the gratuitous slicing and dicing of people without any of the suspense, but I didn't expect this low-rent movie starring Thora Birch to be just so unpleasant, in its style and mood and its delivery. It doesn't help that the cast mostly looks like the understudies of other actors (that one guy is a dead ringer for Denis Leary, another one for European Cameron Diaz) and none of them can act very well (Birch, of course, being a master thespian of under-acting if that's possible). But any moment that a suspenseful walking/creeping around should work it doesn't, and any moment that we're supposed to be icked or frightened by the next gashing-out of blood is just stupid in its excessiveness.

It also doesn't help at all that the logic is twisted; there's a train that kidnaps unwitting people into using their bodies on the black market, okay, I'll bite, maybe it's like Taken on a Train (ho-ho). Even then there's little thought put into it; they're organ-removers basically- a little like the people in Hostel only providing a "service" albeit extremely criminal and psychopathic and with some of the usual big galuts in tandem. But what about what's usually done with organ removing and transplanting like, I don't know, a CLEAN ROOM! It's one thing to be evil East-Euro organ removers, it's another thing to be incompetent while doing it.

Also, the ending is one of the lamest in modern cinematic memory, even if it's straight-to-video. There's little to recommend about it except for a few (unintentional) laughs early on before the Olympic team gets on the train and parties down at an overly-red-lit nightclub.