I went into the screening of this, not really thinking about it more than looking forward to seeing something with a little production value, after having just sat through Bubba's Chili Parlor. Bubba's was fine - fun even, and I am not the kind of person to badmouth a low budget zombie flick... However, I'm glad The Midnight Meat Train was the film we ended the night with - even if we did have to catch a mostly empty train home, afterwards. Gulp.
God bless someone finding Vinnie Jones a role where he can pull it off. The man had one word to say in the whole film, which worked - because I don't imagine Mr. Jones being shit-hot at accents, bless him - and all he had to do was look menacing and wield a huge fucking meat tenderising hammer. He did it, and he did it well. His presence and his strength are perfectly suited here.
God bless someone finding Vinnie Jones a role where he can pull it off. The man had one word to say in the whole film, which worked - because I don't imagine Mr. Jones being shit-hot at accents, bless him - and all he had to do was look menacing and wield a huge fucking meat tenderising hammer. He did it, and he did it well. His presence and his strength are perfectly suited here.
Why strength, you ask? Because his character is beating people to death! It's so cool. He sits on a late night train and when a lone person is left, he gets his hammer out, walks up to them and just bashes the living shit out of them.
His character ('The Butcher') is so strong, and the film is so into giving the gorehounds some fodder, that the hammer scenes are some of the best in the film. Eyes pop out from the force of the blow, heads roll. It is really excellent stuff. I think I counted just one moment of shoddy CGI and that was it. The rest of the time I was squirming with glee and/or disgust.
You can tell the plot is from a short story, but the film doesn't suffer for that. Having the story be of a shorter length probably helped with writing the screenplay; as there would have been fewer distracting details, plotlines and characters to slim down into a nice sizeable chunk.
This is tight - there are only eight characters in it, and only a maximum of four of those would be considered main - and well paced, and most importantly of all: downright sick and enjoyably twisted in places.
I've never got into Clive Barker's writing, for some reason. Maybe it's about time I started?
You can tell the plot is from a short story, but the film doesn't suffer for that. Having the story be of a shorter length probably helped with writing the screenplay; as there would have been fewer distracting details, plotlines and characters to slim down into a nice sizeable chunk.
This is tight - there are only eight characters in it, and only a maximum of four of those would be considered main - and well paced, and most importantly of all: downright sick and enjoyably twisted in places.
I've never got into Clive Barker's writing, for some reason. Maybe it's about time I started?
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