The Midnight Meat Train
2008; directed by Kitamura Ryuhei

Kitamura Ryuhei, a Japanese director who has become a favorite with both critics and fans of Asian movies with efforts like Versus and Alive, makes his English-language debut with The Midnight Meat Train. Based on a short story by Clive Barker, this film should satisfy fans of both gore and psychological horror movies.

The Midnight Meat Train centers on Leon (Bradley Cooper), a photographer who is trying to break into the art world in New York City. Advised by an art dealer (Brooke Shields) that his work needs to be darker, Bradley decides to head to the subways late at night. During one of his trips, he manages to stop a gang of thugs from assaulting a woman, who later turns up dead. Heading back to the scene of the crime, Bradley sees a mysterious man (Vinnie Jones) skulking the subways, and begins to investigate further. What he turns up ends up to be a trail of blood leading all the way back to when the subways were first built.

To be honest, I wasn't too excited to check out The Midnight Meat Train, since most of the exported Japanese directors coming to Hollywood nowadays seem to just churn out the same old safe but boring PG-13 "I see dead people" ghost stories. This is about as far as you could get from that. Kitamura's style still snugly fits in with his and other Japanese directors' work, especially in the sense of using the sets and locations to the fullest advantage. The mise-en-scene contained here, from the gritty city streets, to the almost too-clean interior of the subway cars, lends a great atmosphere, placing a fine feeling of dread into the viewer, as they begin to fear what will be coming around the next corner.

However, unlike the fairly squeaky-clean treatment most J-horror gets once it hits western shores, The Midnight Meat Train doesn't hesitate to throw out a bit of the claret when called for. Actually, scratch that -- it's more than a bit. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a gore-fest, but let's just say there are certain scenes (notably one where Vinnie "cleans" one of his victims) that you probably shouldn't watch if you're very squeamish or perhaps eating greasy Ramen noodles. Sure, a lot of the blood and guts was probably thrown in for shock value. But, overall, it works, in that the gory scenes manage to tread that line between shock and outright "torture porn" very well.

If there is fault to be found with The Midnight Meat Train, it's with the ending. Following the template of Barker's short story, it tries too hard to explain the motivations of Vinnie Jones' character, and comes off as convoluted and a bit ridiculous. Sometimes, the boogeyman just needs to be the boogeyman -- that monster who could be hiding in any shadow, with no explanation as to when and where they'll strike. The film-makers should have been a little more confident in the audience's ability to fill in the blanks about the story, which no about would have resulted in a better last impression than The Midnight Meat Train's slightly silly conclusion leaves viewers with.

RATING: 7