All Aboard - Matthew's Meat Train

All right. I just finished watching “The Midnight Meat Train” and it is just as godawful stupid as I thought it would be. I actually had high hopes for this movie. I watched the special features before I watched the movie, something I very rarely do because watching the special features usually leads to discovering some plot twist which will surely ruin my otherwise enjoyment of the movie. But since I am not a fan of the genre and didn’t suspect that there could be any revelatory plot disclosure, I watched the special features first.

I watched the feature entitled “Clive Barker, Man Behind the Myth.” I had heard of Clive Barker certainly, but really didn’t have any idea what kind of man he was. He initially seemed to be an interesting, well read, intelligent man. The feature was done in an interview style with occasional cutaways to discuss and display some of his movies. He waxed rhapsodic about his theory of the horror genre and tried to intellectualize what he did. He then discussed “The Midnight Meat Train” in specific, explaining its hidden meaning and import. I bought it. I started to get excited about seeing the film and dissecting its themes for myself. The feature went on to explain that Clive is actually a very accomplished and complex individual. He wrote many in depth, intense, cerebral horror stories. He has brought many of those stories to film, and that is where he garnered his fame. But he is also a painter. And that is his release for all those macabre thoughts that cloud his mind. So they showed some of his paintings. Fairly infantile. Which portends how the film would play as well, but more on that in a minute. So this dark intellect goes about trying to tie fantasy and reality together just enough to allow plausibility, yet still bring chills to the viewers of his work. You know he’s gay. Those two sentences don’t really go together, but they are both true. Anyway that’s what I got out of the Man and/or Myth feature.

So on to the movie. So the deal is that Leon is a struggling photographer. He and his girlfriend live in an unnamed city which has a metro, subway, underground, whatever you want to call it. They are both poor but in love. The girlfriend works as a waitress at a dive and has such hopes for her boyfriend she doesn’t mind that he doesn’t make much money. One day she finally gets one of their friends to give Leon an introduction to this art gallery owner, Susan Hoff played by Brooke Shields. Wait. Brooke Shields? Well she had to find something to do now that “Lipstick Jungle” is off the air. Brookey-babe pushes our young protagonist to delve the recesses of his soul, be a true artist and go take really cutting edge photographs. So he heads to the subway.

There he happens upon some young punks harassing a model. He takes pictures of them and then frightens them off. Yea, a wimpy little white boy with a camera, by himself, scatters three young black hoods in the subway. This will not be the end of the illogical happenings. He takes the pictures to Susan/Brooke. She encourages him to do more. And we are off.

Leon, with the encouragement of his girlfriend, goes prowling the streets at night taking more pictures as he goes. And since he had so much success with subway pictures he has to head down there of course. The previous plot development has been interspersed with vignettes of Vinnie Jones (you may know him from the Guy Ritchie English thug pictures like “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Three Smoking Barrels”) playing the part of Mahogany (that’s really the characters name) galumphing around the subway cars sneaking up on people, whacking them on their heads with a great big shiny mallet, and carving them up. He then removes their clothes, teeth and fingernails. Then he hangs them by their feet on the top handrails on the subway car. When he is finished he heads home and scrapes pustules off his chest. Don’t ask me about that last part; it was never explained.

You know what happens next. Leon happens to run into Mahogany and takes some pictures of him doing his deeds. Mahogany eventually catches up with Leon. He doesn’t kill him, oh no. He takes his camera, strips him naked, tattoos his chest and leaves him to wake up in the basement of a slaughterhouse. Leon must get his camera back. Apparently the tattoo is making him a little crazy. His girlfriend tries to help. She and the aforementioned friend go to Mahogany’s apartment. The aforementioned friend gets caught, and clobbered and cut up and hung up eventually in the subway car. The girlfriend, (because she is cute?) gets away, screaming like a banshee.

SPOILER ALERT: So we head towards the finale in the subway. Leon's girlfriend goes down into the subway looking for her friend. Leon goes into the subway looking for Mahogany. Mahogany goes down into the subway, because that is what he does. They all meet up in a subway car. Much blood splattering. Grunting from Leon. Grimacing from Mahogany. And banshee wails from Maya.

The girlfriend’s name is Maya. I should have included that fact earlier, not that it matters. It just would have been polite to refer to her by her name.

Mahogany is eventually pushed off the moving train. And the subway car stops at the final stop, a dark and foreboding place. The subway conductor (you didn’t think subway trains had conductors, did you? Or at least you thought that the conductor would stay oblivious to all that hubbub behind him in the train.) comes out and asks Leon and Maya to please step away from the meat. Ah ha.

The point of all this - seriously don’t read further, if you don’t want the plot spoiled for you - Reptilian humanoids climb aboard the train and eat the meat that Mahogany has prepared for them.

Mahogany shows up again, looking a little scraped up. He and Leon fight. Leon kills Mahogany. The conductor kills Maya. Leon becomes the new Midnight Meat Train provider. I guess that was the point of his tattoo. Maybe it will get scabby and form pustules eventually, I don’t know.

Okay so I didn’t like the movie. It, like all movies in the horror genre, is stupid. Other genres have stupid movies as well, but I don’t go out and watch them either. So beyond the fact that the plot is implausible, what bothered me was that everyone acted like an idiot. Why would you go into a killer’s apartment? Why, if you did go, would you not have one of you stand guard at the door to warn the other person that a large brute with a big shiny mallet was bearing down on them? Ugh, so many plot incongruities even to mention. I will say this, the idea of the story is good; the plot was just poorly executed.

And one final note and I have harped on this before. So in this move it is okay to show a subway rider being hammered in the back of the head so hard that his eyes bulge out and fly out of his head, roll on the subway floor to be eventually slipped on by another victim. Yes show all of that in perfect gory detail. Close ups, slow motion, blood everywhere. But in another scene where Leon is taking seductive photographs of his girlfriend, no good angles, everything obscured by corners or clothes or hands. Nudity bad. Blood, pus, gore okay. Sheesh, this culture.

Matthew