Movie Review: The Midnight Meat Train
Dunno if it'll last; but I've been thinking lately that I used to write reviews and I haven't for a while and so here is a review and maybe there will be more and maybe there won't.
The Midnight Meat Train is an American horror movie directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, based on a short story of the same name by Clive Barker. Sorry, according to the trailer it's not merely by Clive Barker, it's from the "legendary mind of Clive Barker". Right. I used to be a pretty big fan of Barker's and even at the height of my fangirlitude, I'm pretty sure I never thought of him or his mind as "legendary".
Anyway, the rest of this review contains spoilers if you've neither read the story nor seen the movie. For those of you who think movie reviews should be spoiler free, stop reading after this paragraph. I need to talk about the movie as a whole in order to explain what I did and didn't like, and that includes the ending. Those of you not sure if you want to see the movie, I'd say that most of you don't. A few of you like splatter/horror and/or B movies and probably should see it for yourself, just so you can form your own opinion and because I still think Kitamura has potential to become a really good director.
Right, so, basically, this is the story of Leon, a struggling young photographer trying to move into becoming a full time artist. In his attempt to "capture the City as it really is" he becomes obsessed with an incredibly serious looking butcher. I mean, actually a butcher, that's his day job. Stalking the butcher and descending into madness himself, Leon discovers there is a particular late train which the Butcher rides -- killing and then, you guessed it, butchering the one or two people who are last on the train.
On the surface, this sounds all right so far. But, it's not far into the film that we, the audience, have to deal with an odd schism in the direction and/or the writing. Kitamura plays all of the murder scenes (and we get those long before our protagonist works out what is going on) as over-the-top B-movie slasher. Buckets of blood, slow motion brains splattering. The butcher kills people with a very heavy looking stainless steel mallet. The second guy we see offed gets hit in the back of the head with the camera before his face and we get to see his eyeball come out of its socket right at the camera in slow motion. Good stuff if you're making a B-movie slasher in the vein (forgive me) of Re-Animator or Evil Dead. But, that has to be the tone of your movie for it to be "over-the-top" and not "laughable".
Unfortunately, Kitamura plays the rest of the film as a very straight. So, we get the serious attempt at character study of our protagonist, Leon, as he becomes ever more obsessed with figuring out what is going on and becomes changed by what he finds. And we get a very Man Bites Dog, starkly uninflected, portrayal of the butcher. So, when that eyeball does come flying in loving slow motion at the camera, the tone's all wrong and all you can do is laugh. Laugh because it is ridiculous, not because you are in to it and loving it.
And, there it is. It is almost impossible to get into this movie. You can (or I can, anyway) get into an over-the-top gore-fest if that's the theme of the movie. Things that happened in Evil Dead, taken out of context, are ridiculous and even silly. But, the entire tone of the movie fits with the actions in the film and if you laugh it's out of sheer glee, not because the film is laughable. But I couldn't get into The Midnight Meat Train, because every time the drama of Leon's transformation drew me in, there'd be another scene where the director was screaming at me to dig what he can do as he films a scene through the eye of a decapitated head back on the train with the butcher.
The writing did not help things at all, either. Most of the dialog was fairly flat and lifeless, and an awful lot of the progression was given to us as stuff we just have to accept because one of the characters told us so. Near the climax of the film Leon's obviously cracking up, he showed up the night before with a strange symbol carved on his chest and claiming the butcher took his camera. Later that day he disappears. Leon's girlfriend drags a friend with her to break into the butcher's apartment. The friend makes an attempt to suggest this is not a good idea and then is immediately and with no further protestation "convinced" to do it by the girlfriend stating 'you know we have to get Leon's camera so we know what he saw. It's the only way we can find him.' Ok. I'm here in the audience. I actually know things the characters on screen do not -- like, that the butcher actually even lives here -- and I am completely unclear on how a picture of the outside of a hotel tells you what room a guy lives in, why the girlfriend believes the camera would be at the home of the butcher, why (even with uncooperative police (which was established)) two regular people would even conceive of breaking and entering as a solution to a problem, or how the girlfriend even knows Leon is missing since he was supposed to be at an art opening. But, the friend is like "ok" and they proceed with the break-in. Which, of course, is just a setup to allow a tense scene filmed in dark-o-vision in which the good guys scare each other a couple of times and then don't notice the real killer showing up. Yeah.
But, the main problem is this progression by narrative insistence. There's no reason for the girlfriend and the friend to be at the butcher's apartment. And there's no reason for the butcher to return home while they're there since he's been carefully laid out by the film as eerily methodical in his habits. But, one "you know it's the only way" and here we are. There's a lot of this throughout the film.
And, speaking of dark-o-vision, I think I am about done with horror films being filmed in blue-o-vision. Yes, the lighting in the subway can be sort of creepy. And yes, that over-cranked blue-ish lighting gives the movie a very dark, post-industrial feel. But, seriously, if you guys all do this every time, it really starts to lose it's impact. Seriously.
Ok. And all of that is before we get to the problem of the ending. I think we're supposed to be shocked and horrified when it turns out that the butcher is not just butchering people for fun; he's hanging up the meat in one of the subway cars and the subway's stopping on some unused side track and CHUDs are getting on and eating the people. OK, not really CHUDs; but, you know, CHUDs. But the issue of where the murdered people are going has not really been set up as central or even interesting part of the film. The film is about the main character, his obsession, and his descent into madness. Except when the film is about the butcher and the amazing splatterfest he gets away with on the New York subway. I mean, sure, Leon mentions once that the bodies aren't found because the butcher is unloading them someplaces. But, really, that's it. No part of the film until the ending has anything to do with what's happening to the bodies after the butcher butchers them. And then, suddenly, it turns out the whole movie is about how there are these CHUDs and there is a small circle of humans who conspire to feed them to keep the peace or something.
What we really get are CHUDs, a fight scene in which Leon is clearly becoming the next butcher by killing the current one, and then a speech by another human who's in on it explaining that the CHUDs were here before humans and what a privilege it is to serve them (my joke, not theirs, sorry!). If you're going to suddenly spring some shit on us in the last five minutes of a film, it better be some truly revelatory shit that the whole rest of the plot does a nice turn on. Not some random CHUDs and a human who, for no reason I could determine, eats the main character's tongue raw.
So, overall, a very uneven film. I really want to like Kitamura's movies. Even this one I definitely enjoyed parts of. But it was really too all over the place and didn't hang together at all. I'd give it two stars out of five.
The Midnight Meat Train is an American horror movie directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, based on a short story of the same name by Clive Barker. Sorry, according to the trailer it's not merely by Clive Barker, it's from the "legendary mind of Clive Barker". Right. I used to be a pretty big fan of Barker's and even at the height of my fangirlitude, I'm pretty sure I never thought of him or his mind as "legendary".
Anyway, the rest of this review contains spoilers if you've neither read the story nor seen the movie. For those of you who think movie reviews should be spoiler free, stop reading after this paragraph. I need to talk about the movie as a whole in order to explain what I did and didn't like, and that includes the ending. Those of you not sure if you want to see the movie, I'd say that most of you don't. A few of you like splatter/horror and/or B movies and probably should see it for yourself, just so you can form your own opinion and because I still think Kitamura has potential to become a really good director.
Right, so, basically, this is the story of Leon, a struggling young photographer trying to move into becoming a full time artist. In his attempt to "capture the City as it really is" he becomes obsessed with an incredibly serious looking butcher. I mean, actually a butcher, that's his day job. Stalking the butcher and descending into madness himself, Leon discovers there is a particular late train which the Butcher rides -- killing and then, you guessed it, butchering the one or two people who are last on the train.
On the surface, this sounds all right so far. But, it's not far into the film that we, the audience, have to deal with an odd schism in the direction and/or the writing. Kitamura plays all of the murder scenes (and we get those long before our protagonist works out what is going on) as over-the-top B-movie slasher. Buckets of blood, slow motion brains splattering. The butcher kills people with a very heavy looking stainless steel mallet. The second guy we see offed gets hit in the back of the head with the camera before his face and we get to see his eyeball come out of its socket right at the camera in slow motion. Good stuff if you're making a B-movie slasher in the vein (forgive me) of Re-Animator or Evil Dead. But, that has to be the tone of your movie for it to be "over-the-top" and not "laughable".
Unfortunately, Kitamura plays the rest of the film as a very straight. So, we get the serious attempt at character study of our protagonist, Leon, as he becomes ever more obsessed with figuring out what is going on and becomes changed by what he finds. And we get a very Man Bites Dog, starkly uninflected, portrayal of the butcher. So, when that eyeball does come flying in loving slow motion at the camera, the tone's all wrong and all you can do is laugh. Laugh because it is ridiculous, not because you are in to it and loving it.
And, there it is. It is almost impossible to get into this movie. You can (or I can, anyway) get into an over-the-top gore-fest if that's the theme of the movie. Things that happened in Evil Dead, taken out of context, are ridiculous and even silly. But, the entire tone of the movie fits with the actions in the film and if you laugh it's out of sheer glee, not because the film is laughable. But I couldn't get into The Midnight Meat Train, because every time the drama of Leon's transformation drew me in, there'd be another scene where the director was screaming at me to dig what he can do as he films a scene through the eye of a decapitated head back on the train with the butcher.
The writing did not help things at all, either. Most of the dialog was fairly flat and lifeless, and an awful lot of the progression was given to us as stuff we just have to accept because one of the characters told us so. Near the climax of the film Leon's obviously cracking up, he showed up the night before with a strange symbol carved on his chest and claiming the butcher took his camera. Later that day he disappears. Leon's girlfriend drags a friend with her to break into the butcher's apartment. The friend makes an attempt to suggest this is not a good idea and then is immediately and with no further protestation "convinced" to do it by the girlfriend stating 'you know we have to get Leon's camera so we know what he saw. It's the only way we can find him.' Ok. I'm here in the audience. I actually know things the characters on screen do not -- like, that the butcher actually even lives here -- and I am completely unclear on how a picture of the outside of a hotel tells you what room a guy lives in, why the girlfriend believes the camera would be at the home of the butcher, why (even with uncooperative police (which was established)) two regular people would even conceive of breaking and entering as a solution to a problem, or how the girlfriend even knows Leon is missing since he was supposed to be at an art opening. But, the friend is like "ok" and they proceed with the break-in. Which, of course, is just a setup to allow a tense scene filmed in dark-o-vision in which the good guys scare each other a couple of times and then don't notice the real killer showing up. Yeah.
But, the main problem is this progression by narrative insistence. There's no reason for the girlfriend and the friend to be at the butcher's apartment. And there's no reason for the butcher to return home while they're there since he's been carefully laid out by the film as eerily methodical in his habits. But, one "you know it's the only way" and here we are. There's a lot of this throughout the film.
And, speaking of dark-o-vision, I think I am about done with horror films being filmed in blue-o-vision. Yes, the lighting in the subway can be sort of creepy. And yes, that over-cranked blue-ish lighting gives the movie a very dark, post-industrial feel. But, seriously, if you guys all do this every time, it really starts to lose it's impact. Seriously.
Ok. And all of that is before we get to the problem of the ending. I think we're supposed to be shocked and horrified when it turns out that the butcher is not just butchering people for fun; he's hanging up the meat in one of the subway cars and the subway's stopping on some unused side track and CHUDs are getting on and eating the people. OK, not really CHUDs; but, you know, CHUDs. But the issue of where the murdered people are going has not really been set up as central or even interesting part of the film. The film is about the main character, his obsession, and his descent into madness. Except when the film is about the butcher and the amazing splatterfest he gets away with on the New York subway. I mean, sure, Leon mentions once that the bodies aren't found because the butcher is unloading them someplaces. But, really, that's it. No part of the film until the ending has anything to do with what's happening to the bodies after the butcher butchers them. And then, suddenly, it turns out the whole movie is about how there are these CHUDs and there is a small circle of humans who conspire to feed them to keep the peace or something.
What we really get are CHUDs, a fight scene in which Leon is clearly becoming the next butcher by killing the current one, and then a speech by another human who's in on it explaining that the CHUDs were here before humans and what a privilege it is to serve them (my joke, not theirs, sorry!). If you're going to suddenly spring some shit on us in the last five minutes of a film, it better be some truly revelatory shit that the whole rest of the plot does a nice turn on. Not some random CHUDs and a human who, for no reason I could determine, eats the main character's tongue raw.
So, overall, a very uneven film. I really want to like Kitamura's movies. Even this one I definitely enjoyed parts of. But it was really too all over the place and didn't hang together at all. I'd give it two stars out of five.