"The Midnight Meat Train" comes from the mind of Clive Barker, writer of "Hellraiser" and what a twisted mind it is. The basic plotline is a photographer (Bradley Cooper) that is trying to get more "edgy" photos, so he starts taking late night forays into the streets and subways of New York to capture "the heart of the city". When one of the passersby he photographs turns up missing, he finds himself getting more and more obsessed with a man (Vinnie Jones) he sees get off the same train he last saw her go into. As it turns out, this man calmly and quietly rides the same train every night and when the train passengers thin out, he brutally murders the last few riders. His main murder weapon is this huge meat tenderizing hammer that packs quite a wallop. While the title makes it sound like a gore-fest (and it is!), the movie actually does a nice job portraying the photographer's deepening obsession with proving that this is going out, spiraling nearly into madness himself. The gory scenes are especially gory with "eye-popping" special effects, but there is much more to this movie than gore. It works very well as a psychological drama. It is not perfect though. The ending sort of goes off the rails (pun intended) a little bit and, at one point, the final third of the movie becomes a bit too much "action movie" (the hero packing a belt with the weapons he will use to take down a bad guy, a prolonged fight sequence), but still a very good movie overall. When the reason for the nightly slaughter is revealed, it is a bit anti-climactic and goes down a strange road. I would definitely recommend this one highly for horror movie fans. Grade: B
Trailer:
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