Who can say no to a Clive Barker film?
And that’s how I ended up watching Midnight Meat Train. With a cast including Leslie Bibb, Bradley Cooper, and the always odd Vinnie Jones I expected this to be a bloody good movie. The previews had me ready. Bradley Cooper plays a photographer who is trying to capture the reality of the heart of New York City. He is pushed to make his photographs even more “real”, which leads him witnessing a murder on a subway. But why stop when it’s only starting to get dangerous? Lets stalk the killer, keep taking pictures, and see what happens next…
“I’ve got a train to catch.”
So right away we have a bloody opening scene. Random guy on subway ends up slipping on the floor to which he discovers is drenched in blood. He looks around and we pan away to walls splashed in blood in his train, and the next train, which is then followed by the sound of meat getting hacked up. Already I’m excited.
Time to meet the characters.
Leon is our man, an edgy photographer who wants to make it in the art world but seems to be stuck. Luckily his girlfriend Maya teams up with his friend Jarvis and get him a connection with Susan Hoff (played by Brooke Shields) who tells him that if he’s not succeeding in his goal. Basically he’s there at the right place but wrong time. This pushes dear Leon to follow a group of thugs into the subway, take pictures of them starting to assault a girl but end up stopping them, pointing out to the lead thug that they’re on not only his camera, but the surveillance camera in the station. Random girl lives to see another – oh wait nevermind. She gets on the train, he takes one last picture, her head gets smashed by a meat cleaver wielding maniac.
I would like to say I always love odd music playing during a murder scene and the music the girl puts on her headphones right before she gets owned was great!
Blah blah blah, Leon shows the picture of the thugs with the girl to Susan, she loves it and tells him to if he gets two more as “strong” as those she’ll put him in her gallery show. But wait, she’s a really a model who has gone missing? Leon does the right thing and takes the pictures to the cops. But there’s something odd about this particular cop, she doesn’t buy his story. Thinks he’s just another tabloid photographer and sends him on his way.
Cut back to the subway…
Girl and two guys talking, girl sees killer coming tries to warn guys but they don’t listen, results in wicked awesome death scene! Goodbye Randall. A cleaver to the back of the head will apparently blow your eyeball violently out of your face.
Its here that we finally get to see the face of our killer. Silent and creepy, he still doesn’t have a name.
Another great death scene when he kills the drags the remaining girl (after she slips on Randall’s eyeball) through the train and we get to see it all happen from her point of view. She’s double bitch-slapped with the cleaver resulting in her head rolling away end us getting to see her decapitated body spurting blood from the neck. Then we pan out from her eye and see her head. Fabulous!
Meanwhile Leon sees our killer leaving the subway, starts taking pictures and following him. We learn our killer… is also a butcher.
Subway again… interesting fight scene where we see our killer start coughing and struggling as he gets into a fight with a guy he’s trying to kill. Suddenly a train employee comes in, and shoots the guy through the back of the head and out his eye (I’m sensing an eye theme here…) and says he’s disappointed. We learn our killers name is… Mahogany. (Wow… sounds, um… terrifying?)
Cut to an odd sex scene between Leon and Maya in the closed diner she works at when he pre-proposes to her. Not sure the point of this except to add another random sexy-like scene so the killings seem more dramatic?
Back to Mahogany. And he’s cutting these nasty growth things off of his chest, putting them in a jar, and putting the jar behind the mirror with alllll the others. Ew? Now I’m slightly confused.
Leon continues to follow Mahogany and taking his picture, which leads to him getting chased out through a maze of hanging animal carcasses in the meat factory and our favorite tofu eating photographer winds of grabbing pieces of steak off his friend’s place and licking the juices off of his fingers. I’m sensing something bad, and now I’m even more confused.
Maya realized Leon seems to be snapping in his obsession with Mahogany and he proves her totally correct when we get to watch a creepy odd scene of Maya stripping as Leon sobs and has flashbacks while he attempts to photograph her. And then… the stalker becomes the stalked. But what does he do when he sees our killer in the mirror? Step riiiiight in to the trap and still follow him!
Now we get our lovely ripping off of the fingernails scene that seems to be a requirement for odd scary movies, and that makes me squirm and look away. Its true… I can watch someone get sliced up, eaten, torn apart.. but show me a fingernail snapping off and I gag.
Back to our boys…
Mahogany sees Leon taking pictures of him butchering up the bodies on the train, smiles at him and its GAME ON! But poor Leon, ends up hanging upside down himself (still alive) and then gets his chest carved up with the claws of… something. He comes home, Maya is freaked but she decides on her own to see whats going on, which leads to Jarvis being taken and eventually she gets onto the train. Meanwhile Leon gets all suited up in chainmail and knives and hops onto the train to save Maya’s life. After a long fight with Mahogany in trying to save Maya, he throws Mahogany out of the train! And just when you think its safe… here comes another train employee.
“Please. Step away from the meat.”
Enter: creatures! So this is what carved up Leon’s chest with the weird symbol
Notice I said that Mahogany got thrown off the train, but I never said he died. That’s because… he’s still alive! He comes back for another fight with Leon in the bone-yard and we learn Mahogany has the same mark on his chest. Uho. Leon stabs a sharp bone through Mahogany’s neck, we get to see him struggle to speak for a minute until he finally gets out the word “Welcome” and then Leon jumps down slamming a knife through the back of his neck and out of his mouth.
I think its pretty safe to say he’s actually dead now.
But its not over, a train employee comes over, explains that they must serve these creatures to maintain the balance and separation, its been going on for centuries yadda yadda. He then proceeds to rip out Leon’s tongue and eat it he walks away and over to the giant pile of bodies with Maya on top. Leon watches screaming minus a tongue – as he stabs Maya, cuts her open and yanks out her still beating heart.
But………….. its still not over.
We see the ring… on someone’s hand as he’s putting on a suit and going out. Wait, he’s getting on a subway train. He’s carrying that same leather bag. Could it possibly be…?
I’m not telling.
Overall Ratings:
Blood use was awesome. Creepy killer guy, check. Not too many good quotes. Odd creature twist.
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