Midnight Meat Train (2008 Review)
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Vinnie Jones
Lionsgate Films / USA / Color / Rated R / Widescreen (2.35:1) / Dolby Digital / English / 98 min / Viewed via FearNet Video On-Demand
Clive Barker is one of, if not THE most imaginatively disturbing and creatively gruesome authors of our time. His stories of the grotesque transcend what our minds can fathom or would want to. He combines myth with modern day splatter, violence with pleasure, and the repulsive with the beautiful. “The Books of Blood” is a masterpiece of horror that is a prime example of the way his mind works. Volume 1 includes a story that, just by the name alone, conjures visions of sinew, blood and viscera. That story is “Midnight Meat Train”. Director Ryuhei Kitamura (Azumi, Versus) and screenplay writer Jeff Buhler are now charged with the unholy task of bringing this grisly horror to the big screen.
Leon is a struggling photographer in New York City trying to make it as an artist as well as a boyfriend. He is working on a photo book with a “Heart of the City” theme in which he shoots the “real” city. Things that people don’t usually see. The things that make N.Y.C. what it is. He meets the owner of a big art gallery (Shields) that tells his that he needs to be more fearless and really get into the meat (PUN ALERT!) of what the city is. Taking her advice, he starts to go out late at night and take pictures of the dregs of the streets. After following a group of thugs into the subway, he sees them assaulting a lady and breaks up their fun, but only after getting pictures of the ordeal.
The next day he reads that the girl he saved from the punks is now missing, but the gallery owner loves the pictures and tells him that two more photos with the same strength as this one, gets him into his own show. This sparks his curiosity about the girl as well as fuels the fire of photo taking. It doesn’t take long before a well dressed, Eastern Block Marine Corps Drill Instructor looking dude (his name we assume is “Mahogany” from the tag on his bag) starts to take center stage in his photos and quickly becomes an obsession after he follows him from the subway to his job, a butcher, and back to the train. He soon realizes that some of his pictures may tie the mysterious man to the girl’s disappearance. Could he be a supernatural serial killer that has been stalking New York’s train system for decades? Or is the photographer losing himself in his art?
I won’t go into a big diatribe about how movies never live up to the book. They are two separate media that should never be compared. “Based on” means just that, not an exact translation. That being said, Midnight Meat Train holds very true to the original Barker story. There are elements added that I suppose movie execs push to be in every movie (damsel in distress, etc.), but overall I think that Clive should be happy with the outcome. The same raw, primitive, cold feeling you get from the short story comes through in the movie mostly due to the fantastic direction, great acting and the use of color. The shots at the meat packing plant are drenched in all greens and blues to give it a very cold feeling. The same trick is used for the scenes on the subway. It makes for a very tense setting in both places.
They definitely don’t skimp on the blood and guts. Just like the book, it’s filled with images of slaughtered meat, both swine and human, and the violence that precedes them. The killer wields a giant metal butcher’s hammer that would give Thor’s mighty Mjöllnir a run for its money. Some of the bludgeonings are shot in almost a 3-D style where the flying brains, eyeballs and blood are coming right at you. The only problem is they are done with CGI, pretty well done CGI, but CGI nonetheless. I prefer the grassroots approach to SFX. Overall, the movie was very entertaining and deeply rooted in Clive Barker’s mythos. It is one of my new favorite movies based on a Barker story.
