The original story first appeared in Volume One of Barker’s short story collections entitled Books of Blood in 1984. Twenty-four years later, Midnight Meat Train has been made into a film that is disturbing both visually and psychologically, despite a few flaws
Plot Synopsis
A photographer, trying to capture the reality of life in the subways, inadvertently stumbles onto the trail of a serial killer dubbed the “Subway Butcher.” Hoping to score his big break, he attempts to follow the increasingly bloody trail only to discover the true horror of what lies beneath the city streets.
Midnight Meat Train in Depth
The film opens on several people being slaughtered in a subway car by a man with seemingly inhuman strength. Every surface is slick with blood.
It then abruptly switches gears to introduce Leon (Bradley Cooper), a vegetarian freelance photographer who is attempting to capture the grit of the city. When a gallery owner (Brooke Shields) criticizes his work for not being real enough, he heads into the subways one night and photographs a beautiful girl as a gang threatens her. He ends up saving her but she soon becomes another victim of the subway butcher.
Spending more and more time in the subways, trying to solve the mystery, he makes the connection between several disappearances and a silent butcher named Mahogany (Vinnie Jones). Leon starts following him and witnesses a shocking bloodbath on board a late-night train ride. When the police refuse to believe him, due to lack of evidence, he becomes obsessed with tracking the imposing killer.
His girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) and best friend Jurgis (Roger Bart), both worried with Leon’s increasingly bizarre behavior, try to get him to stop his quest. Their pleas fall on deaf ears as the photographer eventually learns the true motive behind the nightly slayings.
Unaware that Maya and Jurgis are now tracking Mahogany, Leon heads off to a climactic and gory showdown with the butcher that ends with a pile of bodies and an unusual twist.
Worth Watching?
Despite being practically buried in the theaters by Lionsgate, for reasons that were never explained, Midnight Meat Train is actually a pretty solid horror film.
The script sometimes takes a backseat to the visual gore of the killings but there are enough psychological twists to make the film slightly creepy to watch. The gore itself, along with the rest of the film, is shot mainly in blue tones, so instead of a sea of red, the massive quantities of blood appear almost like black ink throughout the film.
The ending also seems to be a bit heavy handed as the true explanation for the killings is presented almost as a morality question of which is worse: the monsters you can see or the people who choose to serve them.
Even with its small flaws, Midnight Meat Train should satisfy horror fans looking for something twisted and who don’t mind high levels of violence and gore.
View the trailer at the official Midnight Meat Train website.
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