Lovers of the horror genre are familiar with Clive Barker’s mystical works, and any of his stories would pique their curiosity. People were anticipating something exceptional when The Midnight Meat Train was made into a film, and they were not disappointed!
The horrific storey of a photographer and his fascination with a psychopath, along with the stunning reveal at the end, was a winning combination. The graphic brutality satisfied the gorehounds, and the title of the film was surely justified by some unfathomable gore.
It’s one of Barker’s best-known short tales about a supernatural serial murderer, and director Ryuhei Kitamura performed the job effectively. Before becoming a Hollywood superstar, Bradley Cooper acted in this picture, and his powerful performance with Vinnie Jones is not to be missed.
We’ll do an autopsy on this film in this video, tearing it apart so you can comprehend some of the hazy notions that have been proposed. We’ll also take a few moments to explore the surprising ending and its potential ramifications. As long as you’re not afraid of graphic violence in movies, stay with us as we explore a terrifying classic!
The Midnight Meat Train – A Detailed Synopsis
The film starts off with a bang, as we watch a passenger awaken from his slumber on a late-night subway train. He notices something odd about the empty train and gets up to investigate the compartments, but he stumbles and falls on his back in a pool of blood.
He gets back on his feet and witnesses a slaughter, the likes of which will leave you in distress right in the opening sequence! The killer doesn’t speak a word as he meticulously hacks his victims into pieces with unnatural strength, and the onlooker, the well-dressed passenger, looks on with fear in his eyes.
The next sequence introduces us to Leon, a photographer who aims to capture some highly praised city photographs. He’s attempting to capture some distinctive, grimy images of the city, but his efforts have gone unnoticed. We see him conversing with Maya, his adoring girlfriend, and she appears to have just the right thing to cheer him up.
She apparently got him an appointment with Susan, a well-known photographer and gallery owner, and this meeting may turn his life around! Leon is delighted to have this opportunity and heads to meet her along with their common friend Jurgis.
However, the meeting turns out to be disappointing as Susan dismisses his pictures and advises him to dare to snap something more extreme. She wants him to capture the harsh underbelly of the city, and there should be nothing holding back his snaps.
Jurgis instils confidence in Leon by stating that Susan must have appreciated his work to the point of giving him all of this advice, and Leon resolves to honestly follow her directions. He goes out late at night to photograph the city’s unsavoury aspect and ends up in a subway station.
He sees a young girl being harassed and tormented by three individuals and decides to photograph them doing so. However, his morality prevents him from becoming a coward, and a CCTV camera aiming directly at the goons encourages him. He challenges them, and the gang avoids any further trouble and makes their way out.
The lady thanks him for his help and gets on the late-night train. But her fate has something much worse in store for her. We see her vibing to some music when the frenzied killer approaches from behind with a hammer and tenderizes her head with a massive hit.
Maya looks at Leon’s precise and frightening photographs the next day and thinks he’s on the right track to being chosen. Leon visits a nearby restaurant and orders his typical vegan lunch. Maya, his girlfriend, works as a waitress at the establishment, and while he casually checks the newspaper, he learns that the lady he saved the night before has gone missing.
The lady’s sudden departure intrigues him, and he feels that the individuals bothering her had something to do with it. Leon takes the photos he took to the cops, but he doesn’t get a warm welcome.
The police officer, Detective Hadley, seems to be more inquisitive about what Leon was doing so late in the subway station without any purpose. He almost feels like he is being targeted and leaves the station dissatisfied with police action.
Back at the studio, Susan is ecstatic about the images he managed in the subway station, and she offers that if he can bring two more pictures of the same quality, he would find himself in her next show! Leon celebrates with his girlfriend before heading out for the night to capture some more of such realistically haunting images.
The late-night train transports us to yet another terrifying scenario. A woman is travelling with a pair of suited gentlemen, and the lady is concerned about the strange legends surrounding the trains.
Her husband chooses to exit at the next stop, but we see how surprised she is to discover that they may have missed it. In actuality, the train takes a detour into a tunnel that is plainly not on the itinerary. This is when the assassin appears. One of the men’s heads is smashed, and his eyeballs shoot out like ping-pong balls! He grabs the other’s crotch with a hook and then attacks the defenceless woman.
The second man attempts to stop him, but he is simply too powerful, and we witness him casually beheading the woman to finish the terrible killing! As the murderer exits from a subterranean escalator, Leon is spotted sitting outside the metro. Something about the killer’s harsh, expressionless face causes Leon to take a few snaps, and he even attempts to track him down.
Leon can’t help but be pulled to the killer’s presence, which is almost violent. When the murderer takes his hand, his cover is shattered, and he gives a weak excuse about his photographs to get away from him.
However, Leon notices that the man enters a hotel, and from that moment on, he is completely engrossed with this unusual individual. He returns home, and while reviewing the photographs, he notices the same man in the subway train as the young lady he rescued.
He figures out that there has to be some kind of connection between the disappearance and this man. Leon starts following the man as he heads to work, and it turns out that the man is a butcher working in a meatpacking plant – some good practice in the day for what he does at night! Leon takes some more pictures, careful to conceal his identity this time.
At the end of the day, the man heads to the subway station, and Leon follows him like a shadow. The man waits patiently on a bench as trains leave until the specific late-night train arrives. Leon captures some more shots as the man walks into the train, and just as he is about to follow the man into the train, he is apprehended by a cop.
The cop demands to search his camera for explosives, and Leon’s protests fall on deaf ears. The train speeds off, and we see it take the same detour as the last time when the three people were brutalized. This time, however, there is a slight change. The last passenger is quite a strong man, and when the killer tries to get him, the man fights back.
It gets so intense that the train guard has to intervene and shoot the passenger dead. We learn that the killer’s name is Mahogany, and the guard tells him that his performance tonight has been rather disappointing. In a shocking turn of events we realize that the train guard is also involved in the killings.
In Leon’s personal life, he wants to take his relationship with Maya to the next level, so he gives her a pre-engagement promise ring. He then begins to make love to her, but unlike their previous encounters, which were more emotional, this one appears to be more harsh.
Leon’s mental health appears to have suffered as a result of his constant pursuit of the killer, and he has become considerably roughed up. He also has a disturbing dream where he sees himself as the killer with mutilated bodies hanging on hooks in the same late-night train. We are then shown a glimpse into the life of Mahogany, and there seems to be some kind of disgusting bumps growing on his chest that he removes with a scalpel.
Leon follows Mahogany into the meat-packing business once more, this time dressing in the same uniform as the other employees. He sneaks a few pictures of Mahogany at work, but he gets caught. He hides in a room full of hanging corpses waiting to be cut and jumps onto the back of a truck to get away from Mahogany.
This is a stressful scenario since the killer is close to catching Leon, and he barely escapes. He enters the same neighbourhood diner, but there is a noticeable difference in him this time. When he sees his friend Jurgis eating a steak, despite being vegan, he gets a sudden craving for meat. He orders one of the identical tofu meals instead of his regular!
He is now certain that Mahogany is suffering from a major illness and that he is to blame for the disappearances. His research work finds some interesting evidence from newspapers almost a hundred years ago when similar crimes in the subway were reported. He believes that the butcher is disposing of the bodies in the meat-packing plant, and that is why no one ever finds a trace of the missing people.
Maya refuses to buy his theory because it is clearly absurd that the butcher is the same killer who is hunting down victims for all these years. She advises him to take it easy and catch a break from his regular night shoots. She even strips down to offer some pleasant snaps, but Leon is too caught up with the killer.
This time, he follows Mahogany into the late-night train and sits quietly watching the butcher. The assassin waits for the train to enter the tunnel in a chain of lanes before murdering the final passenger on board. Leon is witness to this unspeakable assault and yet manages to shoot a few photos.
Mahogany delicately sorts the victims’ garments into plastic bags, takes their teeth and nails, and hangs them upside down onto hooks, which he observes in disbelief. The butcher notices Leon at this point, and the latter dashes away to tell the guard. Mahogany smashes him to the ground and knocks him unconscious, unaware that the guard is engaged.
He wakes up tied upside down, and he is brutalized with some specific scars on his chest that resemble a particular design. He finds himself in an unused subway station under the meat factory and walks home in a dazed state. Leon doesn’t acknowledge Maya’s presence in the house, who is visibly worried to see him bloodied and in a mess.
He tells her about the butcher and how he took his camera and attacked him, but he refuses to get help from the police because he has no proof. Leon talks Maya out of it and informs her about his exhibition that evening.
Maya, on the other hand, has become engrossed in the case and is studying the images of the butcher residing at Hotel Barclay. To steal into Mahogany’s flat and collect the camera, she enlists the aid of their mutual acquaintance Jurgis. When Jurgis is apprehended by the murderer, the plot breaks apart, but Maya manages to flee.
She did, however, spend enough time at the apartment to gather some useful evidence. She obtained the train schedule as well as a detailed accounting of all the murders. But it ended up with Jurgis in the midst of the commotion, and Maya dashed outside to contact the cops. We encounter the same detective who earlier fired Leon, and she is not in the mood to listen to Maya.
In fact, she charges her for breaking into someone’s private property without any reason and demands to have the diary back. Maya leaves the police station in disarray, and we see her heading to her workplace and taking a gun before rushing out. The detective is outside, and she wants the diary once again.
We get a clear sign that the detective might also be a part of this sinister crime. Maya threatens her at gunpoint to learn about the whereabouts of Jurgis. The detective informs her that he is on the late-night subway train, and Maya rushes off.
Leon, on the other hand, isn’t quite himself during the show. He just leaves when Susan urges him to communicate with the possible purchasers, claiming that he has a train to catch! It appears like all of their paths are set to cross, and Leon, Maya, and the killer will be on the same train this time.
Maya boards the late-night train, and the pattern begins as usual. Almost everyone disembarks, and the train then takes the diversion. When she attempts to see inside the compartments, she discovers one that is bleeding from the ceiling by dead bodies. These people were stripped naked and hung, and Jurgis was no exception.
Mahogany is busy prepping a body somewhere else, while Jurgis is still alive. The butcher is alerted by the noise and confronts Maya as she tries to unhook him. She tries to shoot him, but her bullets miss the target completely. When she tries to flee, the butcher slams her down with a hammer.
Leon manages to connect himself to the rear of the rushing train, and he bursts in just in time to save Maya, much to everyone’s surprise. This leads to a last confrontation between the butcher and Leon. They engage in a ferocious struggle, utilising the dangling bodies as cover. We watch bodies being mutilated and blood splattered everywhere as the two try to combat one another in one of the most gruesome sequences in movie history.
But this time, Leon came better prepared, and he has toughened up quite a bit from his earlier attempt. He successfully throws the butcher out of the speeding train, and just as he tries to comfort his lady love, the train comes to a halt. The guard, who is involved with the killing process, approaches them calmly and asks them to step away from the meat.
They get off the train and find themselves in a strange place with human remains everywhere. To their horror, they find the actual use of the meat! A group of demonic reptilian monsters that look like grotesque old creatures stumble on board and start feeding off the meat.
Mahogany reappears, half-dead, to battle Leon once more, but this time Leon stabs him in the neck with a shattered femur bone. Mahogany smiles at Leon as he dies and says the word welcome! The train-guard reappears, and we catch a glimpse of the same superhuman power we saw in the butcher.
He adds that the creatures have existed since the dawn of time, and it is their responsibility to keep the evil creatures imprisoned within the subterranean structure. As a result, it is a necessary evil to bring them their regular meat, and we realize that everyone from the top brass in the police to the authorities is aware of this! He picks up Leon from the ground effortlessly and rips out his tongue. Leon watches helplessly as the guard proceeds to stab Maya and rip out her heart!
The video closes on a chilling note, with the investigator handing over the train schedules and information to a new assailant. When the murderer is uncovered, we learn that Leon has transformed into the homicidal butcher.
The final sequence transports you back to the beginning of the film. We realize that the person being hunted down is actually being killed by Leon, who has taken over as the new butcher to deliver the meat!
Various Theories On Who Are The Reptilian People!
The film is shocking, and the climactic revelation comes as a surprise to the audience. However, there is a great deal of interest in the subterranean animals that are briefly seen at the conclusion. We don’t get a good look at these monsters, but we do witness them ripping off and consuming the flesh of the dangling victims.
We couldn’t help but wonder what it is about them that causes the government to satisfy them with a daily delivery of meat. One of the primary issues is whether the monsters could have thrived without human flesh if they existed before humanity.
So why not deliver cattle or some other form of meat to keep them quiet? Besides, the creatures do not look very strong. In fact, they come across as weak and old things that are barely able to walk properly.
Their labored movements made us wonder if it wasn’t possible for modern weaponry to eliminate the demonic threats instead of making human sacrifices! The answers lie in the short story that explains a lot more about the under dwellers than the movie.
These monsters, according to Barker’s short novel, are the city’s secret overlords who govern everything. They’re almost like a hidden government, and their desire for the ordinary people may be compared to the ruling elite feeding off the working class!
Although Clive Barker does not present a clear explanation in this narrative, it is the only reasonable explanation for the lavish treatment given to these underworld beasts. In the story, the creatures explain a bit more about themselves, and it suggests that they are the ones to make this city. A monster also admits in the story that they don’t really crave human meat, but they must consume the same to survive.
Are the creatures C.H.U.D.s?
How many of you remember Douglas Cheek’s film C.H.U.D.? The story is based on a group of humanoid creatures that dwelt beneath New York City. Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers (C.H.U.D.) is an acronym for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, and the reptilian monsters in The Midnight Meat Train are no exception!
Is it safe to suggest that the creatures could be the same as the C.H.U.D.s because the mannerisms of the flesh-eating creatures are strikingly similar in both cases. The C.H.U.D. preyed upon the homeless and even hunted down their targets outside. However, in this Clive Barker story, the creatures clearly enjoy some kind of hierarchy that makes the authorities conspire to send their desired meat to them.
We can rule out the notion that the reptile monsters in Midnight Meat Train are human mutants that mutated as a result of some type of radiation. They are certainly a separate species since they existed before everything else.
They most likely have mind-controlling skills that allow them to force people to do their dirty business. The movie or the story doesn’t shed much light on their powers, but these reptilian old hags would have to be quite powerful to intimidate the advanced human race! They repeatedly stress upon the importance of keeping them confined and appeased, and never is the option of killing them discussed!
Why People Like This Movie So Much?
You will enjoy this film if you enjoy action-packed thrillers featuring monsters and gore. The Midnight Meat Train has received a lot of praise, and a lot of it has to do with how the violence has been handled. It’s a no-holds-barred manner of filming in which the creators didn’t leave any horrific elements out.
The digital blood and splatter might seem a bit off-putting, but overall, it is still way more than what the modern slasher flicks offer justifying the bloodlust that the movie intends to show. The cat and mouse chase between a curious photographer and a secretive serial killer would keep you on the edge of your seats, and the premise is perfectly set up for tension and scares.
It’s not simple to turn a short narrative into a feature-length picture. The little alterations added to the storyline were effective, and the visual shock was pleasing to fans. The protagonist’s girlfriend was introduced in the film, and the graphic visuals of teeth being wrenched or eyes being torn out were precisely what the gore-hounds needed. People probably appreciated the lack of pretentious gimmicks in the narrative, and if you haven’t watched this already, it is high time that you did!
Future Of Midnight Meat Train?
The tale by Clive Barker was published in 1984, and the film was released in 2008. People have long speculated if there would be a sequel because of the open-ended finale. Although there were whispers circulating, writer Jeff Buhler chimed in with his thoughts. He confessed that there had been no direct discussions about the film’s sequels, but that there would be a lot to cover if the chance arose.
The symbiotic relationship between the monsters and the city is rather intriguing, and a sequel could also deal with the possibility of putting up a fight against the new killer and the creatures. However, it might be tough to rope in Bradley Cooper this time, unless it is a big-budget affair!
As of now, there are no plans for a sequel, but you never know when such stories may become a hot commodity for filmmakers. We certainly hope that the sequel lives up to the fascinating notion that the original film’s creators left behind!