The Midnight Train (Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train)

Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling photographer hitting the harsh NY pavement everyday hoping for that monumental break in his career. After his girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) coerces their good friend Jurgis (Roger Bart) to introduce Leon to Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields) – a high level gallery owner, Leon’s dream seems to be on the fast track.

Susan encourages Leon to take his photography one step further and truly capture the heart of New York. He sets out determined to get the photo that will put him on the map. Venturing into the subway system late one night, he stumbles upon a mugging between some thugs and a beautiful Asian woman. Capturing the incident with his camera, the woman boards the train and is brutally murdered.

A couple days later, Leon notices her picture in the newspaper. Turns out she was a well-known model and he seems to be the last person to see her alive. In one of the pictures he snapped of her, he notices a hand with a ring holding the subway door open for her just as she bids a farewell thank you to him.

Taking the photo to the cops, they don’t believe him and even accuse Leon of stalking the woman. Determined to prove his innocence, he ventures down in the bowels of the city that never sleeps at night again to piece things together and find the stranger on the train.

Leon stumbles into the horrid melancholy of a man known as Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) that butchers strangers on the midnight train. As Leon pursues the stranger, he unearths one hell of a sick & twisted secret.

This film is based on Clive Barker’s short story that can be found in the Books of Blood collection.

Oh my, where do I begin with this one????

The Midnight Train is a profoundly disturbing, viscerally mesmerizing & terrifying white-knuckle thrill ride that doesn’t let up until the final stop. It resonates and chills to the bloody bone from the first frame to the last. In fact, it makes the Saw & Hostel franchises look like a slow ride to grandma’s house on a Sunday afternoon.

Lionsgate initially set a release date of May for this film. Great counter-programming to the summer market of blockbusters yet the majority of people say the company got nervous with the Narnia machine, but a few whispers conclude that due to a certain executive’s departure of the Lion’s den, his films have been grounded. As an avid filmgoer, it’s difficult to remove fact from smoke & mirrors within this town. I have to say that I agree with the few whispers rather than the majority.

This film is beyond solid. Everything else should be terrified of the demographic it’s aiming for because they will show up in droves and this film will make a killing at the box office.

Ruyuhei Kitamura directed the living hell out of this. He’s the visionary director of Versus and a little seen gem of a horror film entitled Sky High. Kitamura has an incredibly unique way of showing audiences the breathtaking gore in this film. I’ve never heard so many GASPS and “Holy effing %^&*” during a film before. Myself included am guilty of indulging in this twisted romp of macabre.

The cinematography by Jonathan Sela carries over a unique experience that he used in The Omen remake in 2006. That film wasn’t great by any means, but beautifully shot. Couple this with a tight script by Jeff Buhler & Kitamura’s firm lensing brings the horror genre a new breed of film with Barker’s classic story. With that said, I proudly hail Clive Barker is still the master.

Bradley Cooper turns in a damned fine performance and should finally break the co-star shell of his earlier work and become a strong leading man. He’s always the standout performance; from Wedding Crashers to Alias, but he delivers in this film to the Nth degree. Rounding out the cast, Leslie Bibb is looking as beautiful as ever and the always entertaining Roger Bart is able to lighten the film’s tone up just enough between the carnage.

And then there’s the menacing Vinnie Jones. My holy God, he’s the epitome of evil in this film. Beyond the fact that he’s a hulking former footballer, he’s always a pleasure to see onscreen. From Snatch to Gone in Sixty Seconds, Vinnie’s always been one to lay in the laughs. But in this, his sole purpose it to terrify the shit out of us and he does it brilliantly and without speaking any words. I wasn’t quite sure if I was more scared of that meat mallet he swings or his fucking stare.

There’s no denying that the current crop of horror films has been very disappointing. From last year’s debacles of Hostel: Part Two to the tired Saw IV (time to put that tool in the shed for a couple years) to the onslaught of J-Horror remakes…did we really believe that Jessica Alba got donated eyes from a third-world country??? Puhlllllllllleeeeeeeeease! Hollywood seems to be regurgitating films that don’t have anything new to offer. The Ruins sucked ass I thought. The book was a hit, but from what everyone told me, the film didn’t deliver.

As far as the PG-13 remake bonanza going on that’s being jumpstarted with the release of Prom Night this weekend, I will go out on a limb and defend that film. Rolling your eyes, go ahead, I encourage you to do that, but let me say that WE were ALL twelve year olds at one point…pre-puberty, waiting to rebel from our parents’ family movie nights…we wanted horror but the R-rated films were way way way out of reach. Where did we turn?

For me, it was TREMORS. Remember that one with Michael Gross, Kevin Bacon, Reba McEntire & Fred Ward? It was a classic. And PG-13. My friends and I thought we were so cool going to see that film, able to purchase our own tickets without our parents being there. We had finally arrived at the footsteps of horror.

Don’t get me wrong, before that I had been sneaking peeks at Halloween, Alice Sweet Alice and a crop of Friday the 13th’s but Tremors was my first horror film in the theatre. This version of Prom Night promises to deliver that experience to a whole new generation of the horror audience. They are our future people. Some say the studios have abandoned horror and I have to disagree. The truth is that we’re getting old. Generation X is out and the, whatever they’ve been dubbed, are moving into our once revered seats in the multiplexes. Horror will never die. It’s the bread & butter of Hollywood. From the glory days of Bela, Chaney and Karloff to the salad days of Romero, Craven & Carpenter; the genre is alive, kicking and evolving into something unique. Horror culture activists & purists will most likely hate me for writing this, but it’s the truth. Fanboy sites are ruining the allure of film. Everyone’s got an opinion and now Joey Bumpkin in Kentucky has the ability to voice his reservations of a Hellraiser remake before an inch of film is shot. Think about it before trying to stalk me and rip my fingers off or tongue out. I had a difficult time grasping that until I was sitting with the director of Prom Night and the head of Screen Gems as they were shooting another remake – The Stepfather.

I saw it in a fleeting moment as the brilliant cinematographer, Patrick Cady, was setting up a shot and I was looking at the girl that was barely out of high school run and grab an apple box for the scene. It donned on me like the warm embrace of understanding and I accepted the truth. The dawn of youtube viewers is here and they want fresh meat. We need to let go of our inhibitions and stop dwelling in the horror of the past. If we can collectively do that, Hollywood will reward us once in a while with a treat like The Midnight Train to whet our appetite for a bloody slab of tri-tip rather than tofu.

The Midnight Train is definitely one film to catch before it pulls away from theatres. Let’s pray that it arrives sooner than later. Until then, I’m off to the Prom Night premiere. And yes, I will be wearing my letter jacket. Class of ’96 rules like the mo-(expletive expletive) PG-13 wind.

– Jack Reher