Movie Review #2

The Midnight Meat Train:

SHOCK VALUE: 20 of 33
QUEASINESS: 33 of 33
SUSPENSE: 27 of 34
TOTAL SCARE: 80 of 100

I didn't know there could be a movie gorier than the Saw franchise, but I think this one fits the bill. Though the gore isn't spread throughout the entire movie the peaks of bloody fun in this movie are higher than that in Saw. The main difference is that this killer doesn't really torture his victims...he just kills them and then he butchers them. There were lots of actors I recognized in this film which was really surprising since it was a low-budget/straight to DVD movie. It was surprisingly well written and directed too.

It's based on a Clive Barker story which explains the gore and scares...it also explains the strange ending. I won't even call it a twist ending because too me it felt like this ending was just slapped on at the last second...there was very little foreshadowing. I hope in the book/story there is more clues early on that suggest the science-fiction ending. Most of the movie is a slasher style horror flick. Looking back I saw the potential for foreshadowing (one character talks about “the city” as an entity and another about how there “were never any good old days”...these conversations should have been referred to again later in the movie). Some people might have seen the gore as a little fake – it's mostly cg blood (I think) – but it's good enough for what it is.

The main story is around a photographer so I loved the look of the movie – how its almost through a photographers eye (literally – as seen by the cameraman and figuratively as seen by the character). There are several scenes with odd camera angles, where you see people through lenses - actual and metaphorical (lots of reflections etc.)

There is one strange shifting of gears when before this point the girlfriend simply doesn't want her boyfriend to be out late photographing strangers and following them around at night...and after this point she goes ballistic. There was no gradient to her character - she just does a 180 in the middle of the film which forces the main character to choose between his obsession and her. He lies to her and tells her he'll stop...and when he doesn't - SHE gets drawn into the obsession as well. I'm willing to bet they cut her character development out of the film to shorten it...that's what seems most likely to me, because it makes little sense why she would change so radically without any kind of gray areas.

All-in-all if you can stomach the gore in this film (even I had to look away at the teeth-pulling scene) then you should watch it. It's one of those that you say "hey - why haven't I ever heard of this one before?" If there was ever a sequel to this film it would almost have to be purely science fiction, with more explanation for the mutants and more interaction between them and the humans. It doesn't sound like it would really fit with the first movie - so maybe we should just leave it how it is.