#24: The Midnight Meat Train
Clive Barker's one of my favorite authors. I was introduced to him by my grandma (her words: "This guy is better than Stephen King!" She was right.). She handed me a few of his "Books of Blood" and one of the first stories I read was a charming tale called "The Midnight Meat Train." Which is not the kind of title you can easily forget. In any case, it ended up being one of my favorite of his short stories (along with "Rawhead Rex" and "How Spoilers Bleed"). So when I heard there was a movie in the works, and that it was directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (director of Godzilla: Final Wars and Versus, among others), I began to grow excited. There hasn't been a really good Clive Barker movie since the first Candyman, after all!
Then I find out that Lionsgate, the distributor of the moive, is dumping it. They open it in VERY limited release, only 100 theaters nationwide. And my heart sinks. I'd already missed one movie in theaters that I really wanted to see (Rogue, which comes out on DVD next week, at least), and now it sounded like there'd be another.
Yet fate smiled upon me! Midnight Meat Train DID come to the Seattle region... barely. It's only playing in one theater, a Two-Dollar theater down in Federal Way. The theater wasn't bad, and it WAS nice to only pay two bucks to see a movie, but still, it's unfortunate that the movie is getting dumped by its distributor.
Not that I think it would be a huge moneymaker for them. The movie is VERY grisly, and it's not got a very happy ending. But then, that was the same show for Saw, and that movie was VERY popular and successful. So who knows?
Ah well. I got to see it in the theater, so I get to count it on my 52.
As for the movie? Did I like it? I did. I was VERY nervous that they were going to cut out a key part of the movie (the part that makes it something other than just another serial-killer movie). But no; the movie's actually really quite faithful to the short story, and retains the more outlandish and fantastic parts of the story.
Will YOU like it? At this point, chances are good that you won't. I saw it with a couple friends; mysticalforestand wesschneider, and one of them was lukewarm to the movie and one of them hated it with the firey passion of a thousand dying suns. The extent of his hatred of the movie actually kind of surprsied me, since I quite liked the movie and we usually see pretty eye to eye on movies.
In any case, the movie's only going to be in theaters, I suspect, for about 6 more days. If you read the short story and liked it; go check the movie out. You'll likely enjoy it. If you like Clive Barker's early writing... go see it. You'll get a kick out of it. If neither of these apply to you... you have been warned.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bigfootcountry) wrote,
satisfied
