The Midnight Meat Train

Here's a film I've been greatly (but cautiously) anticipating for some time now. I have been a fan of Clive Barker's since I first saw Hellraiser so many years ago, and the exceptional Ryûhei Kitamura has been on my radar since he directed Versus. But it seemed that The Midnight Meat Train had been a somewhat troubled film, with a constantly shifting release date and subsequently being buried by the studio. That's never a good sign.

The story follows a photographer named Leon (Bradley Cooper) who in a bid to try and capture the darker aspects of city life, stumbles across a man named Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) who is murdering people on a subway train. Leon follows the serial killer, piecing together the many disappearances over the years, and wondering why nobody has found any bodies, he becomes obsessed and starts to lose himself.

It's always worrying when a Japanese director makes a film in America. The likes of Hideo Nakata and Takeshi Shimizu had made some astounding films in Japan, but their output in Hollywood has been nothing but dire. I was concerned that this might also be the case with Kitamura, but more so how his visual style might gel with the kind of story that Midnight Meat Train is, as he does seem more at home in the action genre than horror. Thankfully, the film is anything but dire, and Kitamura's style works extremely well here.

I loved this film. It's something that's quite fresh and different to the current horror crop, a breath of fresh air in an environment filled with the odious smog of the seemingly never ending Saw franchise and the ilk. That's not to say it's without fault, in fact it is pretty damned faulty. One of the first things that strikes you is the over the top CGI blood and gore effects, something that regularly serves to irritate a lot of horror purists. I would say that the exaggerated kill scenes have a camp edge to them as a result, Ted Raimi's death for example made me roar with laughter. I do feel that the effects are something that requires a healthy bit of suspension of disbelief.

The greatest faltering of Midnight Meat Train would seem to be the ending and the script. I've read that the studio wanted to change the ending and remove certain supernatural story elements, and how Barker and Kitamura fought to retain it. While there's nothing wrong with the ending itself, how it's approached comes across as disjointed, maybe it's due to the studio pulling one way and filmmakers another, but the end doesn't feel fully integrated with the story. The film follows a steady pace that feels like it's building towards something, yet it seems to take a tumble when we get there. That said, I think how the story plays out actually works in spite of itself, in that it could have benefited from a better script, but had Lion's Gate got their way with the film, it would have simply been just another overage slasher flick. Midnight Meat Train, in it's own flawed way, is something much better than that.

With regards to the acting, Bradley Cooper makes quite a compelling protagonist, and Vinnie Jones is nothing short of terrific in his role. I know quite a few people don't like Jones as an actor, and most of the time he's just playing himself, but I was really impressed by him here, he has quite a presence and despite his character barely speaking a word for almost the entire film, he really carries it off with his expressions and movement. The only one I wasn't impressed with was Roger Bart, which is a pity because I really liked his performance in Hostel Part II.

Overall Midnight Meat Train is a film that is quite unique, and while definitely very flawed, I really enjoyed it for what it was. While not a masterpiece, the direction, cinematography and music all add to a very tense and atmospheric film, and one of the most exciting horrors I've seen in a while. It's not the best adaptation of Barker's work, I'd compare it more to Candyman than Hellraiser, but if you can forgive the flaws and uneven story, I think it's certainly a good film.