'The Midnight Meat Train' Is Medium Rare

Last night I ended my ceaseless perusal of Amazon Prime films by settling on a little known Bradly Cooper vehicle from 2008 entitled The Midnight Meat Train.

Now, before I get too much into it, this article assumes you've seen the movie. Although the spoilers I mention won't ruin the film for you if you conclude that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO WATCH IT, which I doubt you will if you read this article.

Bradly Cooper rocketed to super stardom in 2009 because of The Hangover (the one where there was a tiger in his bathroom). Prior to that, you can find a whole bunch of nutty little films that featured Coops in a variety of offbeat roles.

You see, before Hollywood decides what an actor is, artistic directors try them out in a variety of different things that are actually kind of interesting.

In Midnight Meat Train Coops plays a struggling photographer, which is a bit of an oxymoron, because anyone who aspires to be an artistic photographer is sitting at a pretty premium level of privilege to begin with.

Coops lives in a "perfectly acceptable, but meant to look run down" apartment with his glamorous girlfriend who works as a waitress and always says things like "take the photos that make you happy, not the ones that make you money."

You see, his girlfriend has found absolutely personal fulfillment serving greasy discount steaks at a third rate diner, and only wants the same for her adorable beau.

The girlfriend is played by that blonde from the TV show Las Vegas. Remember that show? It was that one that wasn't quite offensive or terrible enough to turn off after the opening credits, and which never got so toxic that you'd want to throw a brick at the TV. Plus it had James Caan.

Tagline: "Las Vegas come for the pretty girls dressed to the nines, stay because it won't quite make you vomit."

But anyway, the premise of a struggling photographer getting eaten up by the city he means to capture is actually an interesting idea. I would have watched that movie. And for the first half or so of the film, The Midnight Meat Train is shot with some pretty artistic compositions and interesting angles.

However, the very first scene is that of a guy on a subway slipping around in so much blood that he looks like he's covered in chocolate syrup. It's one of those, "oh, there's so much blood I can't even get up" moments, so of course he flips over, gets blood in his eyes and face. All I'm thinking is, "that's a health risk."

So, we know there's something going on that produces a lot of blood.

Yeah, people are getting murdered on the subway, and Coops is out trying to capture the "dark underbelly of the city" because Brooke Shields (I think it was Brooke Shields), tells him she'll put him in an art show.

Entitled little punk has got some connections... I'm not buying the 'starving artist' BS anymore.

Well, in his enthusiasm, Coops stumbles across this butcher who seems to be prowling the subways and messily slaughtering people with a meat hammer.

It's like cheap surgery on a subway. The good news is it's inexpensive, the bad news is you die.

Coops becomes obsessed with this butcher, and follows him around taking photos which is not creepy at all.

The butcher is played by that guy from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, I can't remember (maybe he was in both). He's the one with the "my gun says 'Desert Eagle' and your gun says 'Replica'" line. He's a big hulking brute who almost never speaks and has nearly as good an intimidating glare as Clint Eastwood.

As Coops stalks butcher, we find he's an interesting fellow who likes to stand in front of his mirror at home and clip growths of flesh off his chest and save them in little jars he keeps in the cabinet. Interesting hobbies make people a lot more relatable.

Okay, until this point, the film is a normal enough thriller with an excessive amount of CGI blood and eyeballs exploding out of heads because of the tremendous force of an impact with a meat hammer (I don't know if you can really do that, but I'm willing to try).

Coops starts to get frustrated that the cops don't seem to care that a mad butcher is slaughtering passengers and hanging them up by hooks on the midnight train to nowhere. So, genius that he is, he decides to follow the crazy butcher on a macabre mortal adventure (sounds like a lost episode of Dora the Explorer) and get a bunch of pictures (he's still kind of focused on his dumb art show and maybe Brooke Shields—I mean who wouldn't be?).

So, get this, Coops gets on the train, photographs the butcher assassinating a dozen or so people. Then sticks around and watches as the butcher meticulously pulls out their teeth, clips their nails, puts their eyeballs into Tupperware, and packs up their clothing into neat plastic bags.

This must take him hours, seriously, who has that kind of time?

Well, of course Coops is caught, banged on the head, and wakes up later hanging from a hook with a weird greasy man-insect thing lathering him up and carving bad crop circles into his chest.

Coops then is released and free to walk home, which is the point where I started to disconnect completely from this movie. I mean, I lost all respect for the murderers. Who lets a guy go like that?

He gets home and the girlfriend is like, "My love, where have you been, I'm so worried/angry at you!"

And he's like, "Yeah, this bug thing hit me on the head and carved black patterns into my chest, plus I was hanging upside down naked."

And she's like, "Well, then we should go to the cops." (Which is the right answer incidentally).

And he goes, "Naw, they'll never believe me, better that I take a bath and sleep." (Not the right answer).

Guess who wins the discussion:

That brings us to the last act when the plucky girlfriend decides to get to the bottom of this and breaks into the butcher's house, only to have the butcher show up and cut her friend to ribbons (a different "friend zone" friend who is only in the movie to get killed at the end).

Then we have a ridiculous Rambo type scene where Coops breaks into the butcher's workplace and puts on a chain mail apron and equips himself with like a hundred knives and a meat hook.

Then there's a battle on the racing subway among a bunch of bodies hanging on hooks, which Coops wins...

EXCEPT, the subway arrives at its destination for the big reveal that the meat is for a pack of subterranean living zombie/bug/demon/vampire things, and half the city knows about these guys and covers up for them.

Yeah, right, as if the whole world would get together on a vast conspiracy that basically sacrifices most of humanity for the benefit of a secret few (oh, don't forget to leave a tip for this article, I need my $800 for Insulin).

At this point, the subway conductor rips out Coops's tongue and eats it. Then he cuts out the girlfriend's heart, and the last we see of Coops, he's marching around on a subway with a bag containing a meat hammer looking for especially tasty looking commuters to feed to the darkness beneath the city.

I'm serious, that's what happens in this movie.

And this is an instance where the denouement actually made the film LESS scary. You know why?

Because the killers all had a REASON for doing what they did. It was a pretty creepy reason, but once you understand they feel they have to kill for the primordial flesh beings who live beneath the city for some kind of greater good, at least you can comprehend where they're coming from.

What's a lot MORE scary is people who engage in indiscriminate slaughter for no reason at all. You could actually cut this film down with existing footage and make it about an entitled little brat aspiring photographer stalking a serial killer and you'd have a lot better movie.

AND you'd get to keep the decapitations and the sequences of eyes exploding out of people's heads. Win/Win!

So, final comment is that The Midnight Meat Train is a great film for the whole family. Start a new Christmas tradition by watching it at Midnight right before Santa Comes. Your family with thank you and so will Coops!