The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

Featured Audience Ratings

• moon r

  
  Vinnie Jones is one bloody scary marvel to behold in this update-and-then-some riff offa Hitchcock's Rear Window. While Bradley Cooper is good in the Jimmy Stewart dumbfounded photographer role, he is incapable to deliver the intended twist at the finale.

• Phil H

  
  Wow this is a really good film, very bloody, very gorey and very well made. The cast are not well known unless you know who Vinnie Jones is hehe everyone is really good in their roles and it really makes for a tense, edge of yr seat ride. The story starts out as a routine slasher… More
  Wow this is a really good film, very bloody, very gorey and very well made. The cast are not well known unless you know who Vinnie Jones is hehe everyone is really good in their roles and it really makes for a tense, edge of yr seat ride. The story starts out as a routine slasher type gore fest but slowly grows into something much more curious, so much so that I don't really understand what happened at the end and why haha I want to find out though as it was really interesting and turned this from a basic splatter machine into an almost mythical religious cult type story....or thats what it appeared to become right at the end. I don't normally like these type of horror films but the inclusion of Jones as the main villain made me wanna see this, his acting is speechless literately haha yet his Lear's and shark like movements are pretty effective....not bad for an ex Wimbledon nut cruncher lol love ya Vinnie Top notch flick

• BG Movie Reviews 2

  
  What can I say about this rather interesting film? Well, I was recommended it by one of my friends as a very scary, very violent film, I believed him and decided to rent this film relatively soon after. Unfortunately, the film is not as spectacular as I had hoped... The Midnight… More
  What can I say about this rather interesting film? Well, I was recommended it by one of my friends as a very scary, very violent film, I believed him and decided to rent this film relatively soon after. Unfortunately, the film is not as spectacular as I had hoped... The Midnight Meat Train is about a train in America on which there is an evil Vinnie Jones waiting with his meat cleaver to kill you! While this is happening, a budding photographer is trying to capture the true grit of New York and begins to find this man and find the train he goes on, unveiling the story of the train itself. What really got me annoyed with this film was the number of times there was way too much blood, or the blood, violence and gore was shown, which turned many scenes that could have been tense and scary into something ridiculously funny! For example, there was a kill scene where this guy is smashed round the face by an instrument and his eye comes out as he dies. This woman tries to run away, but slips on his eye! I'm sorry, but that's down right ridiculous! The only bit I found disturbing was the scene where Vinnie cuts off warts from his body and puts them in jars. But that was unnecessary and pointless if you ask me! All negatives aside the film was average, with a clever and dark ending. I would really like someone to do a better remake, because the story and end is good, but the presentation is sloppy in this version!

• Jim H

  
  A photographer pursues dark subject matter that ultimately leads him on the trail of a psychopath who butchers subway passengers. Like most slasher films, <i>The Midnight Meat Train</i> is both excessively gory, often to the point of ridiculousness, and devoid of… More
  A photographer pursues dark subject matter that ultimately leads him on the trail of a psychopath who butchers subway passengers. Like most slasher films, <i>The Midnight Meat Train</i> is both excessively gory, often to the point of ridiculousness, and devoid of substance. Compare this film to <i>American Psycho</i>, which has all the sex and gore that impress horror fans, and you can see how this film comes up wanting. In the film based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel, the horror motifs are leveraged to make a socio-cultural point about conformity; the closest thing to such a point here is the way violence becomes stimulating, sexually and creatively, for Leon. But this is point that's made over and over again, and it's losing credibility because I think making such a point serves merely as a convenient excuse for showing sex and gore. There's nothing extraordinary about the performances or the direction; horror fans have seen all the tricks director Ryuhei Kitamura employs. Overall, <i>The Midnight Meat Train</i> is every other horror film you've seen before.

• Veronique K

  
  because i've read the original story by clive barker, and my advice is to read barker's story instead. barker's ideas are viscerally stimulating and the choices of his phrases could emulate edgar allan poe. (i mean it!) and his horror always has a profane… More
  because i've read the original story by clive barker, and my advice is to read barker's story instead. barker's ideas are viscerally stimulating and the choices of his phrases could emulate edgar allan poe. (i mean it!) and his horror always has a profane transcendentalism as if you've got to grasp that zen-alike stage of life through perverse forms of gore and sex to reach the ultimate sublime within this cosmos after your micro-cosmos has been enlightened through maxiumized transgression. "midnight meat train" (the short story) is a metaphor of new york, brutal but poetic. as for the movie, yes, the plots stay the same with barker's original except the movie chooses to have the protagonist as a photographer rather than an inquisitive bystander, and all the added plots of his career struggle in the art gallery and the romantic episode with his girlfriend. frankly i read the story, which is really brief (but effective), and my opinion is that it could only be made into 45~60 mins of gothic tv- episode rather than a 98-mins movie in theater. i could see why the director and the scriptor have to fill the time with all those un-necessary distractive subplots like the art gallery and the girlfriend. and i must say, this movie has a terrible scriptor (who i'm reluctant to check the name)...the script ignores lots of important sentences in barker's story, for example, the best part would be barker's allegorical depictions of new york as a whore's vagina...and the conversations of those added-up scenes are so un-imaginative, quite a bore. i really wish someone just makes this short story into an episode of the new twilight zone, which just keeps rehashing what rod serling has written in those good old days (which is okay by me, but you could use new story to inject some new elements instead of modernizing the old stories while the rest stays the same)...

• Summer W

  
  As with many horror movies, it starts of with promise. This one even started off pretty damned good. But in the end, it all went to hell (not in a good way). It went from respectable to total cheese. *sigh* Oh well.

• Kristijonas F

  
  Quite possibly one of the most fucked up movies I've seen in quite a while, The Midnight Meat Train not only has the killer title and the requisite scares and thrills to please almost any horror die-hard, but it's just plain shocking to sit through. Furthermore, the… More
  Quite possibly one of the most fucked up movies I've seen in quite a while, The Midnight Meat Train not only has the killer title and the requisite scares and thrills to please almost any horror die-hard, but it's just plain shocking to sit through. Furthermore, the atmosphere it creates is fantastic!

• Jeff "

  
  Midnight Meat Train is a terrific adaptation from Clive Barker's short story of the same name. The film is vintage Barker. It has everything you'd expect from a Clive Barker story, mind blowing horror, terrific characters and a dark, melancholic atmosphere. Midnight Meat… More
  Midnight Meat Train is a terrific adaptation from Clive Barker's short story of the same name. The film is vintage Barker. It has everything you'd expect from a Clive Barker story, mind blowing horror, terrific characters and a dark, melancholic atmosphere. Midnight Meat Train is a terrific horror film, and is one helluva ride under New York City. The film is scary, stylish and well paced. Director Ryuhei Kitamura successfully builds tension and scares and doesn't rush it, you have time enough to get to know the characters and sympathize with them. Unlike most Horror films, Midnight Meat Train is much different. It starts off my showing you a taste of whats to come, but cleverly slows down a notch to build on the strong story. What also makes this film so great is involvement of Clive Barker as producer. Midnight Meat Train ends up being one of the most original, thrilling films in years. A great cast supports this terrific piece of horror cinema, and its a work of terrifying brutality.

• Tony G

  
  Unhinged story told via creative gore transcends horror conventions for an unusual but thrilling descent into dark mayhem.

• Dead A

  
  So scary.

• Lady D

  
  Hmm, where to start? My thoughts about this film changed constantly throughout. Firstly I chose to watch this film to top up my ?Serial Killers? list and thought at best it could be an average kind of film. Almost immediately I was surprised by thte level of violence and gore… More
  Hmm, where to start? My thoughts about this film changed constantly throughout. Firstly I chose to watch this film to top up my ?Serial Killers? list and thought at best it could be an average kind of film. Almost immediately I was surprised by thte level of violence and gore portrayed, as it was in more of Horror sense and in more of a realistic manner, so that brought my estimation up a tad. The storyline itself wasn?t really revealing too much, too early and did heavily rely on the ?he?s gonna catch you in a minute? card. It also seems the film makers really don?t like Vinnie speaking to much in their films!! Strangely somewhere toward the end, the film totally lost any credibility with it?s ridiculous conclusion. All in all, if you are a fan of gore it?s worth a watch, but nothing much in it if you are not. In it?s credit, it does have a certain scare factor to it.

• Conner R

  
  The CGI and camera angles sucked, but the movie itself was really good and unique from a lot of stuff out there. It just didn't have that Clive Barker touch that I was expecting. It was really nutty like Hellraiser, but not until the very end. It's almost like there was too… More
  The CGI and camera angles sucked, but the movie itself was really good and unique from a lot of stuff out there. It just didn't have that Clive Barker touch that I was expecting. It was really nutty like Hellraiser, but not until the very end. It's almost like there was too much build up when I just wanted to see where Vinnie Jones was going with all those bodies. I did love the acting from Bradley Cooper though, he sold the plot completely. It's great compared to the sorry excuses for horror like Saw.

• Chris G

  
  So I was going through the video store, looking around at the garbage that Hollywood produces these days and lo and behold I found a film called Midnight Meat Train. Whoa! This movie doesn't belong here! It belongs in the back behind the beaded curtain. Then I notice Vinnie Jones… More
  So I was going through the video store, looking around at the garbage that Hollywood produces these days and lo and behold I found a film called Midnight Meat Train. Whoa! This movie doesn't belong here! It belongs in the back behind the beaded curtain. Then I notice Vinnie Jones and blood dripping across the window and realized that this is some kind of horror movie. Midnight Meat Train follows the exploits of a butcher by day, butcher by night played by Vinnie Jones who boards a late night subway train, gets a few people alone, then proceeds to slaughter them in some of the worst CGI I've ever seen. I'm serious, Abraham Lincoln would laugh at this CGI. Throw in a photographer (Bradley Cooper) who starts investigating our butcher and you get a film that tries to be a little Hitchcockian, but ends up flat, tasteless, and dull. The photographer's decent into the obsession is supposed to be the intriguing part, but it just comes off as a tedious plot point to climb over as we wait for more Vinnie Jones slaughter. Sure Vinnie is a bad ass, but could they have given him at least one other facial expression. It wasn't much of a stretch for Vinnie. Just tell him his favorite soccer team sucks and you have "the look". Written by Clive Barker, who is still riding the greatness that was the first Hellraiser, Midnight Meat Train is basically a very cool name with a shit movie attached.

• Cassandra M

  
  I knew this would be worth seeing after hearing that Kitamura was directing this movie. And my hopes were up because although I loved most Clive Barker stories I think the movies mostly were unsatisfying to say he least. I can't remember having seen a decent Clive Barker Movie… More
  I knew this would be worth seeing after hearing that Kitamura was directing this movie. And my hopes were up because although I loved most Clive Barker stories I think the movies mostly were unsatisfying to say he least. I can't remember having seen a decent Clive Barker Movie since Hellraiser.... until Midnight Meat Train came along. Actually I don't get why so many people put this movie down. The cinematography is awesome and the shots of the subway are as impressive and stylish as the city shots. Sure some of the CGI Gore FX looked a bit cheap and also the train FX were easy to spot... still this is a Horror movie and for that the Effects were far above average. I mean come on... the decapitation scene from point of view was a classic and the hammer bashings were raw. I usually hate CGI Blood but here the fountains were pretty impressive and except the real cheap scene where he sees his face in his own puddle of blood I liked it. This movie is as well for gore maniacs as for fans of stylish imagery and he Clive Barker fans also won't be let down. I can't quite remember the story but I think they should have explained the whole background more in-depth because the end leaves many questions unanswered. Perhaps they should not have spent so much time introducing the photographer, his work and his girlfriend although I think also this part of the movie was done with suspense. After all the movie is about a photographer taking shots of New York at night which draws him to the subway where he gets fascinated by a tall guy he thinks is a murderer. He follows him and tries to uncover where he works and goes at night just to be drawn in too deep in a story that involves trains, butchers and human cattle for evil overlords. I think the typical cynicism of Clive Barker came across very well with the butcher dressing up for work, following his time schedule by the minute and pretty much just doing his job. So even with the flaws of a script focusing too much on suspense and gore and forgetting to unfold the whole back story to the viewer I think this one is definitely watchable. So don't focus on some worn off one-liners and too tight budget in the FX. After all I think the decapitation scene is destined to be a classic and I haven't seen such a raw and gory, yet kind of funny scene since the opening of the by far inferior "Wrong turn 2". Well done Mr. Kitamura, thumbs down Lionsgate. People should throw tons of money at this guy to make more movies like this and Versus.

• Dean M

  
  Bloody scary and gore! I see brawny British Vinnie Jones is one of the most frightening villains in recent years in this horrifying flick adapted on the short story by horror fiction Clive Barker. Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura brings his dynamic visual style to the material and… More
  Bloody scary and gore! I see brawny British Vinnie Jones is one of the most frightening villains in recent years in this horrifying flick adapted on the short story by horror fiction Clive Barker. Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura brings his dynamic visual style to the material and the literally eye-popping CG gore is delivered in inventive, anime-inspired fashion.

• Dean !

  
  A pretty decent horror film based on the short story by Clive Barker, which is a bit Stephen King like. It's very bloody and gruesome but the cgi effects make it less shocking. Overall a very simple idea for a film well executed but the cgi effects are over done and the story is… More
  A pretty decent horror film based on the short story by Clive Barker, which is a bit Stephen King like. It's very bloody and gruesome but the cgi effects make it less shocking. Overall a very simple idea for a film well executed but the cgi effects are over done and the story is a bit too straight forward most of the time.

• E.J. B

  
  I've never seen a Clive Barker movie until The Midnight Meat Train, and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. This story is a completely, almost literally downward descent into hell. The main character, a New York photographer obsessed with capturing the worst, most… More
  I've never seen a Clive Barker movie until The Midnight Meat Train, and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. This story is a completely, almost literally downward descent into hell. The main character, a New York photographer obsessed with capturing the worst, most deplorable aspects of city living becomes entangled in a seemingly vast conspiracy involving a train, a man, and a meat cleaver. The CGI gore helps ease how truly gross this movie gets at times. The violence is relentless, brutal, and Vinnie Jones, who plays the killer, creates an iconic villain. Director Ryuhei Kitamura, who helmed the brilliant Azumi and the pleasantly fun Versus controls scenes very well. He's a bit predictable at times, but the film is no less tense. It works primarily because of Barker's source material. You identify with the characters. They are ordinary people who possess a lot of intelligence, but just enough flaws that lead them into the rabbit hole.

• Aaron N

  
  Who's next to board my hot, steaming meat train? Get on while its hot. Driver: Step away from the meat. A pretty strange horror film that ends in a very different place from where it begins. It is plenty gory, but by no means scary. Its only redeeming qualities lay in how well… More
  Who's next to board my hot, steaming meat train? Get on while its hot. Driver: Step away from the meat. A pretty strange horror film that ends in a very different place from where it begins. It is plenty gory, but by no means scary. Its only redeeming qualities lay in how well made the film is, giving the audience frequently well handled scenes involving creative deaths. The film stars Bradley "The Sac" Cooper as Leon, a struggling New York photographer who still manages to hold down a nice apartment, camera, and clothes with his live-in girlfriend, played by Leslie Bibb. Leon is soon told by some artsy bitch, played by Brooke Shields, that he must delve deeper into the underworld to capture great pictures. Fortunately for Leon, he stumbles upon a suspicious man who boards the late subway train and seems to be involved with the mysterious disappearance of many, many people. This man is played by Brit tough guy Vinnie Jones who uses a big meat hammer, among other tools, to kill people aboard this late train once it approaches its last stop. Eventually Leon develops an obsession with finding out more about this man, eventually discovering where these bodies really go. This seems like a fairly straight forward flick, and for the first hour it pretty much is. Then the last act/forty minutes kick in and you have a lot of "what the fuck" moments scattered within. It is quite well made however, so I didn't regret my watching it. The title alone got me into the "want to see" mode, and Vinnie Jones is only a plus. Its just too bad the strangeness really takes over the film in a bad way. Leon Kauffman: I've got a train to catch.

• Curtis L

  
  This movie is pretty crazy. I'm not a huge gore fan, unless it's mideval warfare, but I rented this one because I have an undying love for Vinnie Jones. He's creepy and big as always, so I wasn't dissapointed. I get tired of endings like this one however, they… More
  This movie is pretty crazy. I'm not a huge gore fan, unless it's mideval warfare, but I rented this one because I have an undying love for Vinnie Jones. He's creepy and big as always, so I wasn't dissapointed. I get tired of endings like this one however, they seem to be the norm these days by trying to do something different, but in reality you see it coming an hour into the movie.

• Roy G

  
  Midnight Meat Train may be no classic of the genre, but it's certainly a better and more interesting film than most of what passes for horror movies these days.

Read all 20 featured audience ratings