‘Midnight Meat Train’: Lionsgate Nearly Butchers Its Own Horror Film
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Sometimes the sizzle is better than the steak, and sometimes the drama swirling around a film’s release is a lot more interesting than the film itself. Case in point: this week’s release of “The Midnight Meat Train,” an R-rated horror movie based on a short story by Clive Barker, the acclaimed horror writer who wrote and directed the now-classic horror flick “Hellraiser,” which like “The Midnight Meat Train” was based on a short story in his 1984 collection, “Books of Blood.”
“The Midnight Meat Train” stars Bradley Cooper as Leon, a photographer who wants to be represented by a hip art dealer named Susan (a strangely angular Brooke Shields). She encourages him to put himself in dangerous situations to better photograph The Truth. So off Leon toddles to the subway where he meets The Truth in the form of a serial killer known only as Mahogany (Vinnie Jones). A professional butcher, Mahogany bashes in the skulls of solo subway riders with an enormous mallet on late-night trains, then hangs them from portable meat hooks and carves them up.
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