Midnight Meat Train: Apparently Not a Gay Porn

Midnight Meat Train has an impressive title reminiscent, I think, of the filthiest gay porn imaginable. It also has the imposing Vinnie Jones as the mute and looming murderer. It is also based on a Clive Barker novel. All of this should add up to a good movie. It does not. It adds up to some fun moments and a lot of shouting, "What the fuck?" at the screen. Plotting and pacing are the main problems as well as an over indulgence in CGI gore.

We'll begin with the gore factor. I appreciate a good gore effect, and actual physical props are almost always the way to go to achieve a really nice looking exploding head or torn out trachea. CGI should generally be used to smooth things out or add minute touches that can't be achieved otherwise. Computer effects should enhance the believability of your props and gore effects, not replace them entirely, and that's mostly what's been done here.

Pretty much all of the blood spatter in real time has been done in CG, and it just looks cartoonish and lame. The one really good physical blood gush looks absolutely wonderful. After seeing it near the end of the movie I wanted to go back and force the director to do everything over. This isn't to say that the CG is totally wasted. At one point a man is smashed in the back of the head with the killer's signature chrome meat tenderizer and we get a good slo-mo pan of his eyeball popping out of his contorted face. This manages to look nice, and since it would be impossible to pull off with a physical effect, it's justified.

The characters and plot also left a bit to be desired. Leon, the photographer leading man, starts out fairly compelling and watchable. We start to see a slow build of plot and tension that we hope will pay off. Then it all gets thrown out the window and he goes from mildly obsessive to raving lunatic in two scenes for basically no reason. No new evidence is discovered. No massive discovery is made. Nothing. His "relationship" with his girlfriend, which should be a source of tension, is little more than periods of smiling or yelling, depending on the circumstances, punctuated with rough or playful sex, depending on the circumstances. Not that I am looking for a romance film, but the love interest in the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre was much better done.

The plot clearly needed more time to develop, but was cut short because of the director's or writer's short attention span. It starts off at an interestingly slow pace, and then seems to realize that everything has to be tied up in the next half hour and throws everything out the window. Kicking things into high gear is fine, but we get glimpses that something big and important might be happening and then no hints at all at what that thing might be.

A side character that hasn't been involved almost at all is suddenly willing to help Leon's suddenly convinced girlfriend in breaking and entering into a murderer's apartment. All of the bad guys for some reason have super strength, and for some damn reason the apparently lone detective on the police force is in on everything. The last half of the movie feels rushed, and what should be a big, emotionally gripping scene is really just predictable. There is also a meant-to-be-cool-but-really-it's-annoying sweeping camera move all the way around a subway car that completely threw me off.

I like splatter films and fun/bad horror movies, but this one was mostly just frustrating. The gore was mostly boring CG crap and the plot was only half-realized. I am sure the book or short story is quite good, but this film is not. And as a final note: let Vinnie Jones talk! He is a good mouthy thug. Not so much a good silent killer.