Midnight Meat Train (2008)
Directed By: Ryuhei Kitamura
Written By: Jeff Buhler (Screenplay) & Clive Barker (Short Story)
“A New York photographer hunts down a serial killer”, this is what iMDb has to say about this movie. I on the other hand, have a little more for you than just that…
This movie is shot in a greyish tone, throughout. Much of it is filmed on a train, in the station, and in a meat packing plant/slaughterhouse, so it permeates a cold and industrial feel to it which is pretty effective.
Bradley Cooper is your protagonist, and Vinnie Jones is your bad guy; Brooke Shields has about 11 lines (why? I haven’t the foggiest of ideas, but nonetheless, she’s there!) and Leslie Bibb plays Cooper’s girlfriend who tries to get him to “leave it alone” when it comes to his crazy ideas about what’s going on in the trains at night.
Cooper is a photographer who kinda sucks at it, but is trying to make a profession out of it. He gets his ego bruised by Shields’ character, who is a purveyor of art, and goes out in the middle of the night with his camera to lick his wounds and maybe snap a pic or two. He ends up in the subway where something tricky is goin’ on.
I liked it; it was alright! Why? Aside from the storyline being semi-interesting, the ball rolls pretty quickly in this movie, and not necessarily down hill!
This movie gets pretty graphic in a hurry, which is not a complaint! In fact, one of the first “slaughter” scenes is one of the best!
Why could it have been better? Well, I won’t pick on the storyline because its an adaptation of an existing story, but where it could have scored better points with me were gore longevity. The gore that exists is pretty good, I just wish there were more of it. It seemed like they shot out of the gate in a hurry and got some pretty gruesome stuff in very early and then it fizzled off to Hollywood basics.
i Mean, Seriously... 