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"Stand away from the meat"
Oh, it is really hard for me to refrain from the Gene Shalet-esque one liners here. I could write that MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, based on a short story by Clive Barker and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, is 'One hell of a ride!' or that 'This movie is off the tracks!' but out of respect to this entertaining movie, I won't.
This one has had a hard time seeing the light of day. All the red tape and politics behind the scenes can sometimes call time of death on a movie before it even has had a chance. Ultimately, in the end, it is the horror fan that suffers for it. Luckily though, the great people over at FEARnet have given MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN the debut it deserves on their cable OnDemand channel, complete with Clive Barker giving it a proper send off.
Leon Kauffman (The extremely likeable Bradley Cooper) is a struggling photographer who is in need of a showcase to give his tame pictures of New York life a chance to be seen. You like Leon right away because he isn't your average struggling protagonist. He doesn't carry a heavy burden and he doesn't have a tragic backstory. Yeah, he and his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) are trying hard to make it financially but he hasn't let it get to him. He answers a refreshingly honest "No" when Maya asks him if he is OK, he happily accepts her request to "make her and himself feel better for an hour" with a roll in the sack and he isn't upset or emasculated when she takes it upon herself to set up a meeting between he and famed gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields) in an effort to further his career.
The gallery owner ends up liking his work but feels it lacks an edge. Yes, the picture of a bum sitting next to a business man in a three-piece suit is striking, but the New York gallery set need to see the "filth" touching the clean. So, Leon goes out at night in an effort to capture all that is wrong with the city on film. Enter killer Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), a tall and menacing figure of a man who Leon happens to catch going on a subway train late at night. Leon quickly becomes obsessed with the man, following him to his home and to his work where he works as a....wait for it....butcher. Mahogany knows he is being watched and you get the feeling that he almost wants to be.
Finally, Leon follows him on the train one late night in a 'no turning back' moment and begins to take pictures of the slaughter. Our leads seem to be forming a connection of sorts. Leon needs to be taking edgy pictures and Mahogany needs to kill. Despite the "connection", Leon is quickly attacked by the butcher but awakes alive in the meat packing plant after hours, perhaps it was an initiation of sorts. Leon becomes obsessed with Mahogany turning the apartment he shares with Maya into a palace devoted to the butcher, complete with maps with little stick pins representing all of the victims and several candid shots of the big lug taped on the walls.
His sunny and sweet girlfriend isn't really fitting into his newly found hardcore lifestyle so she and a friend decide to play Nancy Drew and break into the butcher's motel apartment to find out exactly what is going on. While it isn't all that hard to connect the dots, the ending is something I wasn't expecting. Our little blonde hero seems to be the only one who can piece it all together but you get the feeling this isn't the kind of movie that is going to end with a nice and tidy happy ending. In fact, it has a slight feeling of David Fincher's SEVEN to it but at the same time it is its own film.
The violence and gore is, of course, plentiful but the scenes are shot beautifully, almost like a symphony. Instead of violins and harps you have mallets and knives. Jones is effective as the killer, he barely has any dialog so he "speaks" mostly with his face. He is 6'2" of brooding, evil insanity and it works. Cooper and Bibb have an honest chemistry with each other that feels very real. They even manage to bring a sense of loving and tenderness to a sex scene where Bibb is aggressively bent over a counter and that is not easy to do.
MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, in my opinion, is going to be a cult classic. What is viewed as a stigma in not getting a proper and deserved release will turn it into the little engine that could so to speak, everyone loves and roots for the underdog. Luckily, this one has the bite to back it up.
MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN is currently playing on FEARnet
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