Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on August 1, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Sometimes, what seems like the right combination of director and project can still have what feels like the wrong result. Take The Midnight Meat Train, the long-in-the-works film version (being dumped into scattered regional release by Lionsgate) of one of Clive Barker’s most applauded short stories. When word came down that Ryuhei Kitamura, the Japanese bad boy behind Versus, Godzilla: Final Wars et al., had been confirmed at the film’s helm, it sounded like the perfect match, and the director confirmed that he would pull no punches in bringing Barker’s gory tale to the screen. But Kitamura never met a scene of action or violence that he couldn’t trick up with a lot of camera acrobatics and CGI flash, and here, the overwrought visual approach works against what was evidently conceived as a dark, brooding plunge into a horrific literal underground.
A case in point is the moment where a hapless passenger (Ted Raimi!) has a fatal encounter with the subway-riding murderer known as Mahogany (Vinnie Jones). Bang bang, Mahogany’s silver hammer comes down on his head, and the scene cuts to Matrix-esque computerized slo-mo, as gleaming globules of digitized blood erupt from the guy’s socket, along with his eyeball. It’s the sort of hyper-real bit of mayhem calculated to get hardcore horror hounds whooping and hollering (and to be sure, it was greeted with hearty applause by the audience at a screening at Montreal’s Fantasia), but “cool” gore isn’t scary gore, and this kind of fetishizing of the violence works against building a sense of menace around Mahogany.
Similarly, during a major tussle between Mahogany and the film’s hero, photographer Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper), aboard the underground train, Kitamura sends the camera hurtling all around the car and darting in and out of its windows, turning what could have been a brutal and claustrophobic setpiece into an exercise in showing off. There’s also the slight question of plausibility to the idea that Leon would last more than five seconds against Mahogany, a hulking brute who has been dispatching a series of victims on the late-night line, sometimes a few at a time. Leon, who has been told by a potential buyer that his work needs to capture the true dark heart of their unnamed city (which looks at times like New York and at times like Los Angeles, but with a color-coded subway system like Boston or Montreal), witnesses one of the slayings during a late-night prowl for material. Stymied in his attempts to get the police involved, Leon decides to investigate Mahogany’s rampage himself—and gets in way over his head.
Expanding on the Barker piece, screenwriter Jeff Buhler takes as his central theme Leon’s descent into the mental dark side as he becomes increasingly fixated on his murderous quarry. He begins acting strange around (and liking it rough with) his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb), and even starts eating red meat instead of his usual tofu. Despite a committed performance by Cooper, though, the focus of the characterization wavers; in one scene Leon seems fully in the grip of his obsession, the next he isn’t. As the story goes on, he’s abandoned as the central figure altogether as Maya starts driving the story, and proves herself to have no more common sense than girlfriends typically do in stories like this.
On the plus side, Jones conveys a tangible sense of silent menace as Mahogany, and there’s even a hint of vulnerability to him in a scene (never really explained or built upon) where he slices small tumors off his own body. Jonathan (The Omen) Sela’s cinematography drips with eerie mood, particularly at the climax, where the explanation behind Mahogany’s activities is revealed. Here’s where the movie’s themes finally come into sharper focus, though the impact is undercut by the uneven trip getting there—revealing the pitfalls of expanding a dozen or so pages into a full-length feature.
The ambition behind The Midnight Meat Train cannot be denied and should be applauded; Barker’s singular imagination needs more onscreen expression, and all involved clearly attacked this adaptation with enthusiasm, and with no imperative to water down the author’s dark vision. But Kitamura’s particular energies are misplaced here, and the narrative lacks the finely wrought mythology of the Barker-derived Candyman. Still undeserving of its negligible treatment at the hands of its distributor, The Midnight Meat Train will please those simply seeking a hellaciously grisly ride, but ultimately has too many stops and starts on the way to its destination.
