The Midnight Meat Train

[Warning: Spoilers | Also not advised for children]

I am finally getting close to current on my blog list (things I want to write blogs on), which is both exciting and scary. Once I catch up, I'm not sure what I'll write about. We'll have to wait and see.

However, what I noticed is that The Midnight Meat Train was missing from the list. I'm just unsure of whether leaving it off was accidental or intentional on my part. I don't recall. But I figured that since I blog about every movie I see that I should include this one. Warning: it's an odd one.

You may have noticed an increasing amount of horror movies in my recent blogs, and you will see more to come. My sister and best friend have decided that this is our new thing, and we watch horror films almost every time we get together now. But we don't really know what's good. This one said it started Bradley Cooper and Brooke Shields, so it seemed promising. I'm not sure if this was the right choice, though.

This horror movie is more gore than anything else, although it begins with elements of mystery and suspense, an ends with elements of the supernatural. In between, however, the horror is created by very exaggerated killings.

Leon (Cooper) is a photographer who tends to take pictures of nightlife and crime, but runs when things get too bad. One night, he saves a woman in the subway from some gang members. She gets on the train and by the next day, she goes missing. Leon then notices other disappearances and starts to investigate,even though his girlfriend doesn't totally seem to approve.

He discovers, through his own photographs and some clever stalking, that a butcher named Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) is involved. He gets obsessed beyond reason, but it also starts to appear that he is too close to these crimes not to be involved. He sneaks onto the midnight train, witnessing the butcher kill all of the passengers. There is a weird moment where he ends up unconscious and tied up with the bodies, and he seemingly hallucinates claws reaching out, carving a symbol on his chest. When he wakes, he is in a slaughterhouse and the marks are still on his chest.

The girlfriend and her cook friend decide to investigate the butcher to see what Leon has been up to, and start to notice lots of weird and gross things, and violent weapons in Mahogany's apartment. Then the butcher comes home and kills the friend, but the girlfriend escapes.

After all of this, the police still refuse to believe their stories. A police chief leads the girlfriend to the midnight train (somewhat subtly) on the same night that Leon goes back to end the killing spree. Through skill and luck, Leon beats Mahogany and the couple survive, riding until the end of the line. Mahogany and Leon struggle again, with Mahogany finally being killed. The conductor, who of course was involved this whole time, comes in to take "the meat" (bodies). Creepy lizard-demon creatures enter the car and eat the meat, and the conductor explains that the creatures always lived there and have been fed by the butcher to ensure that they don't attack the city above. The conductor kills the girlfriend, then takes Leon's tongue, making him the new butcher. In the end, it turns out that the police are involved and Leon is the new killer.

The plot ended up being a real mystery, with a somewhat intriguing and totally unpredictable ending. Frankly, I expected some other kind of deal being made secretly by the conductor and the police in which killers were allowed to take out their rage on certain unsuspecting late-night passengers, and each other. Sort of a Purge thing, you know? But the ending actually made sense, as unreal as it was.

I was somewhat afraid for a large part of the movie that Leon was already involved in the killings and was somehow unaware of that. I hadn't realized that he would actually tune out to be the new killer.

This movie, as with a number of horror films, mixes food and death imagery. It just takes it to the next level by making the human deaths a part of the good side of things too. Leon is a vegetarian, but the killing and his obsession with it suddenly seems to desensitize him to violence toward living things. He actually starts to crave meat, and eats steak, to the shock and awe of his friend. There is also the parallel of the butcher and the killer, and the way that the bodies are stored on the train just like the livestock in the slaughterhouse. Again, the movie takes this to a new level of parallel by actually making the people become "meat" for the creatures.

This movie was way too full of gore. Lots of blood, stabbing, slicing, crushed skulls, rolling eyeballs, etc. I would rather have the violence implied, or at least not so disgustingly exaggerated. And of course the gross didn't end there. There were some unnecessary sex scenes between Leon and his girlfriend that made me want to be sick, partly just because they were placed in the midst of a movie full of so much death. There is also a really gross moment where Mohagony is cutting little growths or something off his chest, and storing them in Kara in his bathroom! I don't know why, but it was disturbing.

Look, if gore is your thing, then hopefully insist offend. Perhaps this movie really appeals to some people, but I would have preferred it if the killing had been more implied and less blatant. Nonetheless, there was something really intriguing about trying to solve the crime from the objective third person perspective, where we're given enough information to know more than Leon, but not enough to come to the right conclusion until it is revealed.

When the rating says that it is for adults only, on this film, they really mean it. Please don't let your children or adolescents watch this. Children, if you're actually reading this, please don't watch it. You will be scarred for life.