Bradley Cooper’s been a busy man the last few years. His profile is getting somewhat larger thanks to roles in such movies as New York, I Love You, He’s Just Not That Into You, All About Steve, Valentine’s Day, The A-Team, and everyone’s favourite boozy farce, The Hangover. However, just mere seconds before becoming one of those ‘it’ people housewives love so much, he starred in 2008′s The Midnight Meat Train, which, as you can already imagine, isn’t exactly a romantic comedy. In fact, The Midnight Meat Train is another Clive Barker adaptation taken from his collection of short stories, Books of Blood: Volume I. The film also stars British mute and all-around tough guy, Vinnie Jones, who, true to form, only says one word the entire movie. Anyway, The Midnight Meat Train is a lot better than Dread, another Barker adaptation we recently looked at, a wicked splatter flick that offers over-the-top scenes of gruesome violence and enough computer generated blood to fill an entire subway car. Which is exactly what happens, actually.

Right, so Cooper plays Leon, a photographer whose subject matter is the heart of the city, only things aren’t going so well for him. He meets with a gallery owner (played by Brooke Shields) who tells him that his photos lack a certain grittiness and that he needs to face danger head on with his camera. So, taking her advice, he heads into the subway one night where he snaps some photos of a young girl being harassed by a gang of thugs. The thugs flee and the girl thanks Leon and gets on the subway. The next day, Leon reads in the paper that the girl he photographed is missing, and so now of course he’s gotta figure out what happened. This leads him back into the subway at night where he spies a strange man (Jones). He follows him, takes photos of him, etc. Soon Leon is obsessed with this man, named Mahogany, and thinks he is responsible for the numerous disappearances that have taken place over the last hundred years.

One day Leon follows Mahogany to his work, a meat packing plant, and discovers that Mahogany is quite the skilled butcher, which comes in handy for his night job: serial killer. Yep, Mahogany has been killing people on the 2 AM subway. But not just killing them; he attacks them with his giant meat tenderizer, bashing them all to hell, and then removes their eyes, teeth, fingernails, and hair, and then sticks hooks through their ankles and hangs them in the subway like it’s a meat locker. These scenes are quite graphic, borderline ridiculous in fact, but offer truly squeamish thrills. I still don’t understand how Mahogany manages to keep his suit so clean with all that blood flying around, but maybe he’s just that good of a butcher.

Leon’s obsession with Mahogany takes a dark turn, much to the displeasure of his girlfriend, Maya, and soon he is out there day and night trying to get to the bottom of things. There’s a noticeable shift in his temperament as he becomes rougher during sex and even develops a taste for red meat (Leon is a vegan). Then one night he follows Mahogany on to the train and takes pictures of him killing people. Mahogany catches Leon spying on him and beats him down. Leon, however, is spared by the butcher, who doesn’t gut him but instead leaves him hanging and watches as something attacks Leon and carves markings into his chest. Leon awakes in the meat packing plant and stumbles home, bloodied, marked, and without his camera. Maya then takes matters into her own hands by going to Mahogany’s place to get Leon’s camera back, which contains the evidence to everything he’s witnessed. She narrowly escapes with a pile of train schedules that are supposed to be evidence, and goes to the police. The police don’t do anything, though. In fact, the absence of police throughout the whole movie seemed a bit odd to me. How is it that the vicious murders are taking place on the subway and yet there are no police patrolling the subway? Well, even though it made no sense, it does get explained by movie’s end.

Speaking of the end of the movie, Leon and Maya both find themselves confronting Mahogany on the subway and the motives for killing are finally revealed, in a turn based as much on science fiction as it is on horror. You’ll probably scratch your head over the ending because Mahogany as psychopathic butcher is a much better idea than, say, Mahogany as chosen butcher, but that’s the way these things go sometime. All in all though, The Midnight Meat Train is decent enough. Plenty of suspense and brutality for all.

Check out the trailer for The Midnight Meat Train!