Almost a year ago to the day I was at my parent’s house bored, alone and hopelessly unemployed and without anything to really do I fell upon a free on-demand film called Midnight Meat Train which I figured would help pass the long October night. A year later and I suppose you could say that nothing has changed and through a number of coincidences I have again found myself at my parents house so, seeing the oblivious opportunity I decided it would be a good idea to take advantage of on-demand and watch it again- something I knew I was going to do anyway because, as I remembered, it is an excellent movie.
Let me get out of the way first that it is not perfect; anytime I see someone taking a bath in a bathroom the size of my little Philadelphia living room in New York City I get annoyed, especially when that someone is an unemployed photographer whose girlfriend supplements their existence as a waitress. I mean, if they lived in Utah or something, I would understand. Midnight Meat Train seems to have problems at times with attention to detail like that: there is also a fight scene where our hero is standing and in the next clip he is on his back without ever being knocked down as if the editing department simply wasn’t trying and other little inconsistencies as such here and there.
Such errors are, however, to be forgiven when a strong and well executed plot is to be presented: the second Clive Barker story in my 31 Nights of Horror to get high marks, so I guess I am beginning to see what Stephen King meant when he called Clive Barker ‘the future of terror’. In short, Bradley Cooper is a photographer who is trying to make it big but falls short because of his inhibitions with relation to the real grit of his city. In an attempt to bring his work to the edge, Cooper uncovers a conspiracy of murders with a terrible motivation.
JRR Tolkien believed strongly that if you dabble too closely with evil, evil will consume you and Midnight Meat Train has fun playing with this theme in quite an effective way. Speaking of effective, they also utilize Vinnie Jones to his full potential as well: it seems that after his unexpected success in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, every director who thought he too was Guy Ritchie tried desperately to give Vinnie Jones some one-liner to say which will sound cool and tough, though often fall flat on its face: a phenomenon best seen in Swordfish. Here, director Ryûhei Kitamura was smart enough to use him as a silent but intimidating character, which pays off because Vinnie will scare you to death.
Leave it to the Japanese to make a horror film with some effort: Midnight Meat Train has color, atmosphere, good acting, a logical and well played out plot and, yes, character development. We have been talking a lot about character development lately and this is a good example of where it works. The film takes itself very seriously and as we follow Cooper in his downward spiral, we too must take him seriously, which is effectively done here by well written dialogue presented by competent actors in strong scenes shot by a competent director. Compare that with Jeepers Creepers where the first scene looks well shot until you realize the director most likely just positioned the camera so well by accident, as is proven throughout the rest of the film.
Midnight Meat Train is Halloween with an original twist: it’s creepy, edgy and well put together; like a Giger painting, albeit shinier in places.
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