Train

If you like movies like Hostel, Turistas, and Green Inferno, then Train will be a guilty pleasure too. The characters are not fully developed, Thora Birch's (the only actor you will most likely recognize) and the remaining actors' acting is horrendous, and the gore seems over the top, but let's be honest here; we're not expecting to see the next Oscar contender when we watch this film. This movie has the makings for a half decent horror film. - detestable villains, - gore, - characters that you don't care if they live or die and characters that you get attached to (that would be Willy for me), not-needed-to-advance-the-plot nudity, - and a lot of "shhh, be quiet" and "don't go over there" moments to the predictable jump scares. If you don't come into the watching this film with any expectations, and you'll have a good time watching this film if you are a horror fan.

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?

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!!!!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

A group of young American athletes head to Germany to compete in a grappling competition, with mixed success. However, a mix up at the railway station compromises their trip home, leaving them stranded...until a mysterious woman offers them all a trip back on her luxury carriage. They are struck by the hospitality...only to find as the journey progresses, they are on a train of psychopaths who want their organs and will stop at nothing to get them.

Train probably forwent it's right to a cinema release on these shores for appearing so generic and predictable. Take a typical bunch of obnoxious American teens (the only one I could make out of any of them being Thora Birch) place them in a plot eerily similar to Hostel and then, add the even more common denominator today of being a typical 'torture porn' flick where the emphasis is far more on blood and gore than genuine scares. And indeed, the film never achieves anything resembling a claustrophobic air of tension or terror, just a stumbling stutter from one clunky set up to the next. Not surprising, given the plot line is so far fetched and implausible from the off set. Nonetheless, it could have managed as a genuinely creepy and atmospheric film...but by selling out and being just another of the many bottom of the barrel 'torture porn' flicks that you could forget about as easy as that. **

Not exactly sure what I was expecting with this one. I figured, hey, Thora Birch is in this, it can't be ALL bad. A bunch of American kids traveling around in a train getting terrorized in some fashion... sounds watchable. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied.

If my comment title hasn't tipped you off yet, you're in for an hour and a half of equal parts torture porn and survival horror. There's nothing new here and no worth while twists to raise this movie above (or even up to the level of) many similar genre pictures. It seems to meas if all the horror directors have tired of setting their pictures in the rural south, invariably populated with crazed backwoods cannibals and have instead focused on semi-fictional demonic visions of Eastern Europe populated by depraved butchers for hire. The acting is flat and the characters are so unlikeable (not to mention the lack of definition or development) you just can't muster any emotional ties. You won't even find yourself rooting for the bad guy here... you just won't care.

There is one facet of the movie that does seem to shine though. Love it or hate it, the gore in this film is so over the top and just down right rotten and visceral that it will produce a response. The camera does not flinch away... ever. I guess we're all just too complacent as horror fans these days. Gore like this used to be able to carry a film on the merits of the blood spilled alone, as the super bloody extreme cinema was relatively rare, often found only in hard core Asian productions. Now, every movie you watch seems to be teeming with so much of it that we as fans are beginning to demand more than just a slasher guts fest.

There are so many cool horror movies out there that invest their time and effort in delivering more in terms of originality. Unless you're curious, I would seek out something with more depth.