Midnight Meat Train -- No, Not to Georgia

August 10 2008 22:51 Filed in: Movies
When I see superstar Brooke Shields has signed on to star in a low budget adaptation of an obscure Clive Barker short story about a serial killer I’m at the theater damnit!

Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Midnight Meat Train. Long time Clive Barker fan Jeff Buhler, who wrote the screenplay, spent a lot of time trying to get his vision to screen for this little psychological gore-fest. Lionsgate films was apparently so impressed by the finished product that they decided to push it exclusively to a handful of second run theaters in hopes of making back their cash on a quick DVD release shortly thereafter.

This really means nothing because there are few opinions on movies I value less than film industry executives’ opinions, so optimistically there was a little hidden gem hiding out on this $1.25 drama down at the Cinemark.

Midnight Meat Train is the story of photographer Leon, played by Brad Cooper, who is given advice from an art photographer--played inexplicably by Brooke Shields--to take more chances in his work in order to get better shots.
During the course of hitting the streets late at night he stumbles across a mystery involving a serial killer who preys on late night subway riders.

The film tries to balance itself between being a psychological thriller and gruesome gore film and it pretty much falls flat on both counts. The failure that kills it though is the ineptitude at which the psychological downfall of Leon happens in the movie. The journey between struggling photographer to obsessive freak just really isn’t handled very well. It almost literally goes from him being normal, curious and concerned in one scene to suddenly being obsessive bordering on neurotic the next. There’s no transition and the character isn’t developed well enough to smooth the quick change.

It also has one of those weird twist endings. I won’t give it away, but it’s not one of the good twist endings like in The Sixth Sense where all the events in the film fall into place when it’s revealed. It’s one of those twist endings where the surprise comes far enough out of left field that you really can’t tie the weirdness into anything up to that point, leaving you with the feeling that you’ve just watched an extremely shoddily written episode of the X-Files.

Even then, the movie’s brief final scene is one you can see coming from about 20 minutes into the film’s 1 hour and 25 minute run time. It just takes a 10 minute detour into the Twilight Zone before taking you to where you’d figure it would go.

It also has one of those moments that make you have to take heed. When the entire film has to be explained in a brief speech by secondary character near the end there could be an issue with the plot structure. It’s a general rule I have. Not absolute, but never a good sign of a well-constructed story.

I would really have to say give this stomach-turner a pass even at the cut-rate theaters. I’m all for a good gore flick, but even the abundantly violent deaths are barely more than just a lot of fake blood give or take one or two nice bone crunching moments.

Ultimately, its heart is in the right place, but it just pretty much comes up short in everything it tries to accomplish. It’s not very interesting and it lacks any real fun or thrills.

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