Midnight Meat Train

Having downloaded the film The Midnight Meat Train and having it in my iPod for the longest time now with me yet to watch it, the announcement of its screening came as a disappointment to me as I would have wasted downloading the film and not having watched it months after only to have it in class for a screening. The reason I downloaded it was, to be honest, the fact that Brooke Shields was in it (albeit in a minor role) and that it was a horror film that apparently garnered positive praise from critics around the time of its release. I guess I should mention that I've had a crush on her since seeing her in The Blue Lagoon (which is also in my iPod) two years ago.


The Midnight Meat Train is perhaps a very good example of gore-fixated Hollywood. Having previously seen Splinter and The Descent in class should have made me a lot tougher and more immune to the images in the film but The Midnight Meat Train managed still to relentlessly induce cringes and suppressed cries of disgust in me. It should be apparent by now that despite being an avid fan of horror films, I am not a follower of gore horror and that my views on gore-filled horror films are quite below approval and borders on the wish of not having the genre and the style in existence at all. I guess I believe that the Beast Within explanation to the Why Horror? question that so devalues the horror fan and man in general is merely strengthened and reinforced by this particular subgenre of the horror film.

Having these thoughts and protestations up in the air, it is imaginable that I did not enjoy the climax of the film, set in a segment of the subway train lined with freshly cut and butchered corpses lining both sides of the lane plus the final scene of battle with the (thankfully!) darkly lit dead end of an underground lair (?). I still do not find the logic in seeing teeth pulled out and guts spewing out of upside down corpses hanging by hooks plunged deep into each ankle so explicitly shown and captured on film shown with the intent to elicit horror, when all it does is draw disgust.

The Midnight Meat Train isn't all bad when considered apart from the scenes of excessive gore. (Imagining the gore out is a hard hard thing to do!) The commentary it offers on the primal human instinct of curiosity and concern is both biting and insightful--one can act out of curiosity but to commit to the act is born more of true found concern guarding against the evil that has been found. Plus seeing Brooke Shields even in her few scenes was reward enough!

If this review does not offer much insight into the concepts raised in the film, it is precisely because I still have yet to get over the gore in it. Perhaps in the future when I have grown fully immune to it and I revisit the film will I finally be able to see some sort of good hidden underneath piles and piles of decaying human mass and the sickening aroma of still beating body organs.