Horror movies now days seem to take on the same thing over and over again. You have either the devil child, the sad killer who stalks and slashes teens, or a creepy Asian with long dark hair doing things with technology. All the above mentioned films also always take place in a gothic southern mansion and surrounding countryside, or some other secluded alienating location. Enter Clive Barkers Midnight Meat Train, a film based on one of Clive’s short stories, that is both original and effective, and a welcome refreshing thriller in the now stale “horror/thriller” genre.
Bradley Cooper (Alias, The Wedding Crashers) plays a struggling photographer in some unnamed, generic big city (Chicago, New York, they could all fit) and lives with his supportive girlfriend (Iron Mans Leslie Bibb). Their best friend, that creepy guy who had that unfortunate ending in Hostel 2 knows someone who knows someone who knows Brook Shields (Lipstick Jungle) who owns an art gallery. Through a series of events, Cooper’s character is led into the city underground to find its “heart” and take pictures of it for some fancy art gallery showing. This could be his big break. What he stumbles onto is a series of brutal murders, and disappearances, in one of the more telling and creepy scenes, revealing that such occurrences have been going on since the early 1900!!!! He soon has a one on one run in with Mahogany, the well dressed killer with a doctor’s bag of killing implements, his favorite being a heavy metal mallet. Vinnie Jones (bad ass in pretty much any movie he’s ever been in) plays the part without a single word uttered. Which is rare for him, but the silence goes a long way in amping up the creep factor. It’s all in his eyes.
This movie is just an awesome example of style over substance. It’s scary, it’s effective, it’s quick, and just under an hour and a half, the movie knows what it is and gets there fast. Is it deep and logical and thought provoking? No, but it does tap into a real fear that many people have, and that’s the subway. It’s a fact that thousands go missing every year, and it’s a fact that late at night this specific mode of transportation is not the cleanest, or most inviting. Here is a movie that takes that untapped idea and gives it a mythical, epic horror story behind all the mayhem. This IS where the movie falters just a bit. There is a rather supernatural denouncement, which although there are clues to throughout the film, is never really stressed. So it does come as somewhat of a surprise shift in tone that you will either buy and be freaked out by, or be confused and underwhelmed by. However this IS Clive Barker, and if you’re familiar with his work (Hell raiser) then you won’t be surprised at all.
What does work, and work in spades is the direction. The opening death scene has our victim sitting alone, listening to music and everything she does is in fast motion, and herky jerky style like time laps photography, and out of focus, in the background, the killer gets up, mallet in hand, in slow motion. No edits, no cuts, Mahogany just slowly walks up until his slow motion and her time laps come crashing together and BAM! Still no edits or flashy “SAW” style cuts when her face gets bashed in. Its small stylistic flourishes like this that makes every scene in the movie a wonder to watch. Take for example another death scene, shown as a point of view of our victim. After being attacked, and bloody, she slips and slides around the metal train car unable to get a grip on anything until she gets hit in the neck, her view spinning in circles until it rests on her own body, several feet away, still twitching, and headless. We then zoom out of her eyeball, her body still visible in the reflecting of her eye, as she involuntarily blinks. Or another where Leslie Bibb and Co. are snooping through someone’s house, that someone now on their way home. The camera swoops up, looking down on everyone as if from a birds eye view, sliding from room to room, through the walls, down the halls, so you have a PERFECT sense of where everyone is in relation to each other, something that most horror movies now a days don’t bother with.
The Midnight Meat Train is an awesome movie. It’s not an all time classic, but it is does have the makings of a cult classic. Like The Descent or The Skeleton Key or The Orphanage, it’s one of those movies no one hears about, but once you seek it out your pleasantly surprised at just how kick ass it turns out to be. High on style, Medium on substance, it’s always a visual treat; just to look at, even when sometimes the convoluted plot gets in its own way. HIGHLY recommended if you enjoy a good quick scare that will linger in your mind the next time you get in that subway, or walk down that deserted alleyway at night alone……
No comments:
Post a Comment