‘The Midnight Meat Train’ (2008)

Raise a glass — of something red, of course — to Clive Barker, who celebrated his 56th birthday Sunday.

“The Midnight Meat Train” (2008), the adaptation of Clive Barker’s 1984 short story, is the best splatter on TV right now. The “world broadcast premiere” was last week on Fearnet, available On Demand, where it’s scheduled to run through Nov. 30.

I like but don’t love it. I do recommend it.

My partner is crime here is Justin Arnold, whose column on gaming, “Big Game Hunter,” can be found in The Herald and here on HeraldNet. Justin has read the short story and watched the movie. Here’s his take, followed by mine.

JUSTIN ARNOLD SAYS

Clive Barker movie adaptations are a lot like pizza — even when they are bad, they are still pretty good.

The latest adaptation of horror master Clive Barker was both praised and panned by reviewers, only scoring a 58 percent at Rotten Tomatoes for the hour and forty minute long rendering of the short story featured in Barker’s “Books of Blood.”

Casting for the movie was OK. Watching Brooke Shields wade through the movie didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the casting of Vinnie Jones as Mahogany was great.

The terror is present, and would have convinced anyone to abstain from mass transit for at least a month. While there is buckets of fake blood, the way the whole movie was shot impressed me. Director Ryuhei Kitamura shot the film in such a way that gave it a dreamlike quality while still retaining more than enough tension.

The movie follows Leon Kauffman, played by Bradley Cooper, as an aspiring photographer as he slums through New York, trying to capture the gritty realism of the darker side of Gotham. He stumbles through the warrens and eventually into the subway where he jumps a train only to find Vinnie Jones carefully dispatching a young woman.

Eventually Kauffman and his disposable girlfriend get pulled into a conspiracy involving Mahogany that results in a final bloody showdown – and this is where most horror fans checked out. I won’t spoil the end but let’s just say it’s not what you expect of the movie, but what you should expect from the mind of Clive Barker.

And therein lies the rub. The very best horror novels rarely survive faithful adaptation to the silver screen. Plus, what horror fan can ignore the schlock-fest that the Hellraiser series has degenerated into? I mean one of them was so bad it got an “Alan Smithee” credit for crying out loud. In my opinion, anything past “Hellraiser II” was an abysmal failure. But can you say the same for “Nightbreed,” “Lord of Illusions” or “Candyman?” All horror greats, and all worth your time in a theater.

Unfortunately, the movie was hamstrung before it was released. Distributer Lions Gate Films decided that the film would only have a limited release to only a few markets. Would it have enjoyed critical box office success? Maybe, maybe not. The problem with Midnight Meat Train is that it’s not in the vein of the “torture porn,” such as the “Saw” or “Hostel” series, and that’s a problem. When did imagination get back-seated to formulaic drivel?

I hate to write off criticism of this movie because they didn’t read the original story, but it seems to me that people just didn’t get it — or want to get it — because people don’t get Clive Barker. He is one of the most imaginative writers out there, not programmed by the rote conventional “copy and paste” writing you get with other horror writers. Stephen King even lauded his work saying “I have seen the future of horror, and it is Clive Barker.” An aged laurel sure, but is there any denying the genius of Barker?

Answer: no.

I think the average horror fan has gotten so roundly manhandled by the movie industry with the slew of regurgitated celluloid offal that when something unique finally makes its way onto the scene they don’t know what to do. So let me recommend this: buy “The Books of Blood” and then watch “The Midnight Meat Train.” Take a chance and let the imagination of Barker truly seep into your soul.

Trust me, you’ll never take a subway again.

SCREAM QUEEN SAYS

Don’t you think “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” just had to be rattling around in Barker’s head?

“The Midnight Meat Train” is a gorefest, and it’s quality gore. I loved the decapitation scene; my ony criticism is the first, shall we say, “eyeball-skull separation” scene looked pretty fake. Splatter is best left on the screen, I think, so let’s just say it’s worthy of a Queen.

Vinnie Jones, who looks menacing just by waking up in the morning, is well-cast as serial killer Mahogany. And I like Bradley Cooper as photographer and protagonist Leon.

Unfortunately, Leon has a girlfriend, Maya. The character is mostly dead weight and its actor, Leslie Bibb, come to the table empty-handed. In nearly every scene Maya’s alone with Leon, you could run to the kitchen or bathroom — heck, both — and miss nothing.

Hey, let’s break into a serial killer’s apartment. You gotta be freakin’ kidding me.

And that’s why I don’t love this movie. However…

The following is a mild spoiler alert, but I’ll try hard not to give too much away. It is about the ending, though, so you might want to skip the next paragraph.

I have a lot of appreciation for a neat little twist toward the end that gets minimal explanation. The situation just is what it is, and you deal with it on the same footing as Leon. Mostly, when this happens in movies, it’s just bad filmmaking that frustrates the audience. But done right, like it is in “The Midnight Meat Train,” it’s golden. In fact, I wish the verbal explanation of just what the heck’s going on had been even more stripped down, just bare bones. But I did like it.

I give “The Midnight Meat Train” 2 1/2 skulls out of four.

Seen “The Midnight Meat Train”? Post your thoughts below. All aboard! (Insert evil Ozzy laugh here.)