Review: ‘Midnight Meat Train’

Travis:

Bradley Cooper (Alias) plays Leon, a freelance photographer who makes a living taking crime photos for the newspaper while dreaming of becoming a successful art photographer, capturing images of the true “heart” of the city in the middle of the night. After meeting with a well-known art promoter named Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), Leon determines he needs to really dig deep into the city to find the images he needs to succeed. During his scouring of the dark, miserable streets of New York after hours, Leon stumbles upon his first powerful image in a subway terminal. What Leon doesn’t realize is that he’s just stumbled upon a secret so dark and sinister that he’ll never escape it’s inevitable outcome. At the moment he first meets Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), his fate is sealed. Leon comes to believe Mahogany is a brutal murderer who butchers his victims like cattle on the subway late at night. The truth of the situation is far more horrible that Leon and his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) could have ever imagined.

From the very beginning, ‘Midnight Meat Train’ is a film that will distinguish it’s fans from it’s naysayers. In the opening sequence, the man we believe is Mahogany slaughters an innocent man on the train, chopping him up like a butcher cleaving steaks. Throughout the first half of the film, Mahogany’s body count rises in a style suitable for Joe Bob Briggs’ tally system… one groin impaled with a giant meat hook, one blonde who gets her block knocked off with a huge meat tenderizer and one celebrity cameo (Ted Raimi) that’s clobbered in the back of his skull causing his eyeball to projectile from his head on camera. This all reminds me of the good ole days of Italian Horror. The rest of the film also has plenty of gloriously gruesome gore, but begins to take a seat to the side as the story picks up and the mystery begins to unfold. One scene, which marks a sort of turning point for Mahogany, features a curious character played by MMA star Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, resulting in an all-out brawl between him and Mahogany while on the train.

Vinnie Jones is awesome in ‘Midnight Meat Train’. To get a beginner’s feel for the movie, imagine ‘American Psycho’ except replace the 80’s with the 90’s, take away Patrick Bateman’s unique personality and stick him full of crazy steroids. Keep him in his nice suit, but trade out his designer business cards for a leather bag full of butcher utensils. The meat tenderizer is his favorite. The film itself is eye-popping [no pun intended] and director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus) proves he has the flair and the ability to make incredibly engaging films with a keen sense of pacing, editing and successfully stylistic cinematography. Equally as significant as the visual acuity of ‘MMT’ is the use of sound design and audio elements to create an even more impressive thriller for a new age of horror hounds. I simply cannot wait to see Kitamura’s next American film… assuming he’s not been completely insulted by Lionsgate essentially saying his movie is only good enough for direct-to-DVD.

Believe it or not, the film just keeps getting better as it moves closer to it’s intensely spine-tingling end. ‘Midnight Meat Train’ does an excellent job of maintaining the atmosphere and appeal of the original short story, written by Clive Barker, who apparently worked closely with Kitamura. If you have any experience with Barker’s unconventionally graphic and descriptive literature, you’ll appreciate ‘Midnight Meat Train’. I am looking forward to catching this when it releases on DVD, hoping for some great special features.

[rating:4/5]