The Midnight Meat Train

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with a bald man with a briefcase sitting in a moving subway car. As the lights flicker he hears a noise, causing him to stand up. As he walks towards the source of the sound, the next subway car, he slips and falls in a large pool of blood. He then peers through the window to the next car and sees a figure chopping up a bloody corpse.
Leon (Bradley Cooper) is a vegan amateur photographer who wants to capture unique, gritty shots of the city and the people who live in it, and at the advice of gallery owner Susan (Brooke Shields), he heads into the city's subway system at night. He is criticized constantly by other photographers for fleeing danger before shooting a full roll. One night, in a decision to break this trend, he saves a woman on the subway from two thugs threatening her with a knife. The next day, he discovers that the woman has gone missing. Leon is intrigued by the mystery, and begins to investigate reports of similar disappearances. His investigation leads him to a butcher named Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), whom he suspects has been killing subway passengers for the past three years.
Leon attempts to turn some of his photos of Mahogany in to the police, but they refuse to believe him and, instead, cast suspicion on his own motives in photographing the victims. Leon's involvement quickly turns into a dark obsession, upsetting his waitress girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb), who is as disbelieving of his story as the police chief. Leon takes matters into his own hands, boarding the last subway train of the night, only to witness a shocking bloodbath, as the butcher kills several passengers, then hangs their bodies on meat hooks. After a brief scuffle with Mahogany, Leon passes out on the train's floor, he awakes the next morning in a slaughterhouse with strange markings carved into his chest.
A concerned Maya and her friend Jurgis (Roger Bart) begin to examine the photos Leon has been taking of Mahogany, leading them to the killer's apartment. After breaking into the butcher's home, Jurgis is captured and brutally killed. Maya goes to the police, but finds that they are as skeptical of her story as they were of Leon's. A police officer then directs Maya to take the midnight train. Leon, unaware of Maya's involvement, finally decides to put an end to the butcher's crimes. Leon heads to a hidden subway entrance in the slaughterhouse, arming himself with several slaughterhouse knives, and wearing a butcher's apron.
Leon enters the train as Mahogany has completed his nightly massacre, and has cornered a helpless Maya. Leon attacks the murderer with a knife, beginning a climactic battle between the photographer and the butcher. They fight in between the swinging human flesh—Leon's knives against Mahogany's meat hammer—and human body parts are ripped, thrown, and used as weapons. Finally, Mahogany is thrown out of the train by Leon, but not long before it reaches its final stop, a cavernous abandoned station filled with skulls and decomposing bodies. The conductor steps into the car, advising Leon and Maya to "please step away from the meat." With these words, the true purpose of the abandoned station is revealed, as horrible reptilian creatures enter the car and consume the bodies of the murdered passengers. Leon and Maya flee the carriage and go into the cavern.
Mahogany - in a battered and bleeding state - returns, barely alive, and engages in a death struggle with Leon, who finishes the job at last by impaling the psychotic butcher's skull on a blade. Mahogany grins in his dying throes, speaking the single word "Welcome!"
The conductor appears and explains to Leon that the creatures have lived beneath the city since long before the subway was constructed, and that the butcher's job is to feed them each night to keep them from attacking subway riders during the day. He picks up Leon, and with the same supernatural strength as the deceased butcher, rips out Leon's tongue, throwing him to the ground and eating the tongue. The conductor brings Leon's attention to Maya, who has been knocked unconscious and is lying on a pile of bones (presumably this took place some time during Leon's fight with the butcher). The conductor then forces Leon to watch as he cuts Maya's chest open to remove her heart. When he is done, he tells Leon that, having killed the butcher, Leon must take his place.
Finally, the police chief hands the train schedule to the new butcher, who wears a ring with the eight pointed star on it, a symbol for the group that feeds the creatures. The killer walks onto the midnight train, and turns his head to reveal that the new butcher is Leon.

Tags: violence, horror, murder

Review:
Day after day, night after night he takes the 2 am train to hell, where unsuspecting passengers are massacred and then hung up like dead meat.Leon (Bradley Cooper) is an up and coming photograph, who is trying to make it critically, but so far his work has been unable to break it.
The moment you can't wait to know what will happen at the end of the movie or in the next scene for that matter and at the same time you have to fight with yourself to continue watching - that lets you know this horror flick is actually pretty good.Definitely full of flaws and the graphic gore isn't my kind of horror meal.
Adapted from Barker's seminal anthology, "Books of Blood", the similarly named "The Midnight Meat Train" is more than just an opportunity for some sophomoric snickering over its title but one of Barker's most revered short stories about a supernatural serial killer that ekes out fascination, fear and obsession from a lone photographer, Leon Kaufman (Bradley Cooper) stumbling upon the butcher's late night deliveries.Director Ryuhei Kitamura (of "Versus" and "Azumi" fame) offers up one of the year's most brutally alluring gore fests in his American debut.
Prepossessing the exactitude of traits essential to the character, Jones has the nasty glint in the eye, the mysterious swagger of indestructibility and the imperative of consuming evil, as well as having the benefit of looking like the quiet guy in the corner of the bar who could take out an entire gang of hoodlums without spilling his drink.Kitamura's modulation of the material's emotional stakes and his slow-burn style of ratcheting up tension gives the story further layers to plunge into, not withstanding Cooper's unlikely presence as the film's corruptible protagonist.
The gutsy murders are gruesomely executed and equally are ghastly graphic .The film is constituted by some well done horror set pieces with creepy and spooky atmosphere.The butcher-murderer appearance deliver the goods with hair raising chills, full scares and scary frames.The story is borrowing from the original short story by Clive Baker who has several cinematic adaptations, as ¨Nightbreed¨, ¨Lord of illusions¨, ¨Hellraiser¨ and ¨Candyman¨ with their uncountable sequels.
The Midnight Meat Train, as the title suggests, tells of the last train in the system where passengers inexplicably disappears, and I thought that Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura managed to put a somewhat refreshing spin to the entire slasher and torture porn genre.Based on a short story by horror Meister Clive Barker, the story in parts looked like horror thrillers with recognizable moments like those in The Terminator, Shutter, and of course, Jeepers Creepers.
The payload for the movie comes at the back, and my, it's as satisfying a wrap as it can be, though again for those already familiar with some of the mentioned films, you'll more or less expect things to be done the way they did.As mentioned earlier, what was a refreshing spin, was how direct and to the point the acts of violence got, without dragging the scenes out with needless, extended cries of mercy or lingering on gratuitous scenes of gore and blood, which torture porn flicks seem to continuous bog their movies with, that it becomes boring (Yes, I think you can sense that I'm already de-sensitized to such scenes).
Rather than trying to craft creative ways to die in order to go one up against other movies that came before it, The Midnight Meat Train really went back to basics and simplicity, where killing blows are delivered swiftly, before proceeding with dismemberment.While it is disturbing in itself, the distributors decided to shield local audiences from such violence and gore, and hence we got a censored M18 rated version, instead of full regalia under the R21 rating.
The last time I remembered watching a major action sequence involving trains was in Batman Begins, and given that it has to live up to titular expectations, audiences were treated to some incredible all-out action scenes set in and around the train, with some really energetic camera movement and angles to complement the action on screen.But technicalities aside, what really worked and will possibly elevate this film to cult status, will be portrayal and fleshing out the character of Mahogany as the no-nonsense and swift executioner, adding to the list of memorable villains to have graced the screen amongst the likes of the Freddies, Jasons and the Michael Myers of the cinematic world..
If the disturbed denizens of 42nd Street have all but disappeared, scared away by the gloss and glitz of the cineplex and the popcorn munching crowd that inhabits it, perhaps the final bastion of grindhouse cinema can be found in watching a brutal, bloody shock horror film in an empty theater with row upon row of sticky floor and no one but a handful of genre enthusiasts there with you.There's also something deeply disturbing about the mentality of the movie-watching public.
Struggling photographer Leon Kauffman's obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer, Mahogany, the subway murderer who stalks late-night commuters -- ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways imaginable.I have no Idea how I missed this freaking awesome film #1.
Clive Barker's short story, The Midnight Meat Train (from his Books of Blood collection) is a brutal and unflinching look into such a world.What I loved about the original story was the ending and how Barker went from telling a pretty straight forward slasher tale (ala Jack the Ripper) to something that was otherworldly (ala H.P. Lovecraft).
Add Clive Barker's writing, and you have a fun ride through the twisted mind of a horror master...Solid performances by Bradley Cooper and Vinnie Jones, but the true allure of this gore-fest belongs solely to director Ryuhei Kitamura.
I've seen so many horror movies that are rated R with no reason to be.What The Midnight Meat Train got wrong: Beyond everything else, the plot has to be one of the most cliché, unoriginal things to hit a theatrical horror movie in a long time.
I don't know if they cut out parts of the scripts in order to make the movie, but it has so many loose ends and goofs that it makes you sick (not sick from the gore and constant stream of blood that is) I only felt like I wasted a couple of hours of my life a few times before, but sadly, this adds to the list.
I think it's just very weird that Bradley Cooper starred in some horror film because he doesn't looks like a guy who should be in type of movies lol.
Usually I don't waste time to even mention bad film I watched, much less to write a review about it, but this is special category...You can not say what is the worst in this movie: screenplay, directing, acting (?!) or anything else...What was in brain of Bradley Cooper when he agreed to be the part of this bulls**t, that is the question I won't ever get answer on...unfortunately...or luckily?Completely pointless...
Hop on board and hold on tight, 'cos The Midnight Meat Train is a wild ride through the twisted world of Clive Barker, and with splatterific Japanese horror/action director Ryûhei Kitamura at the controls it can only get messy.Based on a short story in Barker's Books of Blood, The Midnight Meat Train stars Bradley Cooper as NY photographer Leon, who stumbles upon the existence of a brutal killer called Mahogany (Vinnie jones) who roams the subway butchering those passengers unfortunate enough to ride the first train after 2.00am.
Leon tracks and photographs the murderous brute as he goes about his grisly work; in doing so he not only starts to lose his sanity, but exposes those he loves to mortal danger.I'll be the first to admit that The Midnight Meat Train isn't without its flaws: as far as the script goes it's a case of 'mind the gaps' with lapses in logic and loose plot threads galore, and Cooper is far from memorable in the lead.
A POV shot from a severed head is delightfully nasty, but the most breathtaking moment comes as Cooper fights Jones aboard a speeding train, the camera constantly revolving around the action, even leaving the confines of the carriage.Next, we have the spectacular gore, which is absolutely eye-popping (quite literally, in one particularly memorable scene featuring Ted Raimi): Mahogany brutally bludgeons his victims with a massive metal hammer, which results in some really nasty injuries (including one total decapitation), after which he prepares the body (shaves the hair, plucks out the eyeballs, removes teeth) and hoists it up using hooks through the ankles.
If anyone was born to play this role, it's Jones: he might not be the most accomplished actor ever to grace the silver screen, but he effortly exudes the menace and mental instability required to make the character a truly convincing figure of fear.As the film approaches its conclusion, The Midnight Meat Train switches track to travel down a more supernatural branch; this change in direction might prove too much for those who thought they were watching a straightforward serial killer flick, but I relished every weird and wonderful development (I haven't read the short story, but it was kinda what I expected from Barker).7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb..
With a title like "Midnight Meat Train" you might want to run and that is only because you know that a stupid horror movie is on its way.
It's a movie that you can't believe even got by the writing stage, and by the time the ridiculously absurd final act rolls around you'll have wished you never bought the ticket in the first place.Starting off on relatively mediocre, straight forward ground, The Midnight Meat Train tells a story that goes from mildly intriguing to irksome to downright repelling.
Yet such aspects are notably missing, rendering the whole point of the feature (the dehumanisation of its characters) inconsequential to the viewer; these aren't people being cut up like cattle; they are cattle; cinematic cattle.Of course, even watching animals being slaughtered isn't a pretty sight, and Kitamura too well knows this, and so The Midnight Meat Train instead takes on a purely abstract form rather than a relevant, compelling one.
But at the same time there was a few things that I was disappointed with.The film has a great story line it follows a photographer played by Bradley Cooper who is taking pictures around New York and eventually comes across a man named Mahogony played by Vinnie Jones who he suspects is the subway train butcher, and finds out that he is right and tries to stop him.What I really liked was that during a few occasions when Mahogony is killing someone, it is shown through the victims point of view, that kind of made my heart pound because you can almost feel what the person is feeling.
Even though some of the killings are really brutal and gory, I was really disappointed at a few points because a lot of the blood that was used in the film was CGI and you can tell that some of the killings were fake, but at the same time there were a lot of killings that looked realistic and really grossed me out.Another thing that I really loved was that Vinnie Jones did a fantastic acting job in this film, even though he had no dialogue, he really proved that you don't need to say big long monologues to pull off a good acting job.In my opinion this film is good but not great, I think there could have been a few things that could have made it a lot better, i'm not going to go into the plot to much because you really need to sit down and watch it.
Approximately 20 years ago, writer Clive Barker melted my brain with The Books of Blood, collection on various volumes of his short stories, which came out of nowhere and were immediately acclaimed as a watershed on literary fantastic genre.In The Books of Blood, Barker showed that the brutal violence could perfectly be endorsed by brilliant stories and that the most grotesque descriptions of human and supernatural horrors are much more terrifying when they are expressed on an almost poetic language.I think that everyone is gonna have his/her favorite Barker's story from The Books of Blood; in my case, that one is In the Hills, The Cities, but The Midnight Meat Train is on a very close second position.Because of that, I had a bit of awe on its film adaptation, but the fact that Barker approved it and that it was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (who made the very entertaining films Versus and Godzilla: Final Wars) made me have a bit of optimism on it.The result was an interesting and entertaining movie, but which is not very memorable and has some important fails.The best element from this film is definitely Vinnie Jones' performance, which is really brilliant.The intensity on his face and his body language bring perfect life to his character.In summary, Jones definitely increases the quality of the movie.In the leading role, Bradley Cooper feels a bit bland.I do not think he is a bad actor; he was adequate as a "sidekick" on the TV series Alias and he showed an excellent instinct for the comedy in The Hangover.However, he does not seem to be very interested in his character in The Midnight Meat Train.Besides of Cooper, there are some important fails on the screenplay.As it always happens when a short story is adapted to cinema, the screenwriter must "pump up" the story in order to get the average running time on contemporary cinema of 100-120 minutes.Some elements on the screenplay work well, like for example the discussions about the main character's career as a photographer, the relationship he has with his girlfriend Maya and some philosophical dialogs he has with his friend Jurgis.But I think the screenplay lost the main point from the short story.I will not reveal it in order not to say spoilers, but the historical and cultural punch with which Barker concluded the short story is reduced to some generic sequences of horror and violence, which lead us to a moderately satisfactory ending but which does not have enough substance to endorse the twist at the end.If I had to compare The Midnight Meat Train with other film adaptations of Barker's works, I would consider it superior to Nightbreed, at the same level of Lord of Illusions and very below of Hellraiser.It may not be highly memorable, but I can recommend The Midnight Meat Train because it made me have a good time in spite of its fails..
I expected a lot form a movie with Clive Barker's name attach and the movie delivers what I need.Vinne Jones plays Mahogany, a very Interesting slasher with no real background, but more importantly his face is well scene throughout the picture, no mask no nothing as he beats passengers of a New York City-like subway car to death for what seems to be no reason.
And of course the savage butchering of Mahogany's many victims all of which lean away from the typical victim stereotypes, and noticeably lean towards the type of people you want to kill when you come across them on the train.Bradly was great, and the motive of Mahogany turned out to be a real cool surprise that they try to lead you off the path of through the whole plot, but Vinnie Jones silent and mask less killer really put this movie on a different level than your average slasher horror movie.
I was in a mood for a bloody horror, but when the first 2 scenes rolled I was kind a: "ok maybe it's not going to be all that bloody, but looks like a good movie with bleak atmosphere, story and developed characters".I was right about the mood, story and characters, but I was hell of a wrong with the amount of blood and gore, since this is one of the scariest horrors I've seen.
Based upon Clive Barker's gruesome and grotesque short story "The Midnight Meat Train" is about an aspiring photographer named Leon who is on the track of The Butcher Mahogany,a cold-blooded serial killer who stalks his victims in the nearly-deserted subway trains and slaughters them via an enormous hammer.Pretty gruesome and very bloody flick with plenty of grim gore and surprisingly unsettling mood.Unfortunately some of the killings with digital blood are not realistic and as a result pretty cartoonish.However I liked the slow methodic movement that Vinnie Jones brought to the Mahogany character.The movie doesn't follow the short story word for word,but it does seem to adapt well to the screen.I have heard that "Pig Blood Blues" will be another film adaptation of Barker's story from "Books of Blood"..
THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN is certainly a weird but fascinating horror film, I admit of course there are leaner and meaner horror films out there but this film's aim is not to try and be overly scary, it actually tries to draw you in with an intriguing plot which it does, it sets a very dark mood and has an interesting atmosphere to it, the camera work has this sometime artistic subtlety about it, like the director was very precise about what he wanted from every shot.the acting is great all around, Vinnie Jones certainly makes the ideal scary bad guy and this is probably the second film where he virtually has no lines, of course he spoke two sentences in GONE IN 60 SECONDS, here he says less.Its not the leanest, meanest horror film out there but its good in its own way..
I had always overlooked watching 'The Midnight Meat Train' because Vinnie Jones featured prominently on the movie poster and I simply couldn't imagine a horror film with him in it being any good.