‘I’ve got a train to catch...’
The title of a film is a tough nut to crack. You need to entice the viewer without being too over the top or overly sophisticated. As with a band name ,you should be looking at longevity. Something that will look good on posters in thirty years time; The Shining, Clockwork Orange. It should be elegant; Alien, Halloween. A filmmaker must traverse all of these difficult terrains when deciding on a film title. Or you could just throw caution to the wind and call your movie The Midnight Meat Train and be done with it. Whatever works for you…
Leon (Bradley Cooper) is a budding photographer who is trying to capture the true meaning of New York City in a bid to become successful. Maya (Leslie Bibb), his hysterical wife, exists only to be treated like shit by Leon, or to otherwise live a life of misery and isolation. When Leon becomes obsessed with a strange man (Vinnie Jones) and a late night train, his life will be forever changed.
So, this is a weird film obviously. From the mind of horror legend Clive Barker, as part of his Books of Blood series, The Midnight Meat Train is pleasingly exactly how you would imagine it to be. Blood, guts, guns, cuts, knives, lives, wives, nuns, sluts and anything else that Marshall Mathers, that other great arbiter of good taste, could summon from the depths of his mind. We have Bradley Cooper on the cusp of becoming a household name (The Hangover would drop mere months after this film did). We have Vinnie Jones on imposing form as a terrifying butcher (although to me, he will always be ‘Vinnie Jones – Left Back’ which kind of negates his role as some kind of immortal demon here). And we have some of the worst CGI effects this side of the Transformers movies. Crucially however, The Midnight Meat Train is a lot of fun, it is genuinely pretty unique, and a great time appears to have been had by all.
A weird but likeable movie.