Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura and starring Bradley Cooper, Midnight Meat Train is based on a short story by Clive Barker.
I know I've said this before, but what's with all the blurry blue/green posters? Bug (2006), Pulse (2006), Quarantine (2008)... Come on guys. You would think an original concept would better sell a movie than attempting to package it as another rip-off. However, the title still rocks.
That said, this movie was good. Not great, just good, as much as my Clive Barker-loving heart pains to say. However, it got me thinking about the nature of the conspiracy.
The Midnight Meat Train basically exists as a food supply for a race of demons that live beneath the city. The police and the conductors are in on the whole thing, and protect the one person whose job it is to dispatch the unlucky late-night passengers. This job is passed along as each executioner becomes less efficient and is found out by someone else. As one would expect after this information is revealed, the narrator, Leon Kauffman, becomes the next butcher after his ride on the Midnight Meat Train. He is actually presented with his equipment by the Chief of Police in the ending scene.
To me, this ties into a basic human fear, which is the fear of isolation. What is frightening about conspiracy is not what is actually being done, regardless of how malevolent the intentions, but one's own exclusion, that things are going on without one's knowledge.
It points to the powerlessness of the individual, and to the fact that one is NOT special. This, I think, is at the heart of all horror, and what makes it diametrically opposed to other genres such as fantasy: the protagonist, and thereby the reader/viewer, is not of any real importance. Underneath this, I think, is the message that most people try to avoid in their day-to-day lives, that someday they will die and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Midnight Meat Train: B-
