The Midnight Meat Train (2008) More at IMDb Pro »

When I started watching this film, I had anticipated the worst. I mean, really... the film was reportedly set to a large enough theatrical release, then pulled from that and put into dollar cinemas. How good could it be? Surely the rumors had to be false, Lions Gate wouldn't have sabotaged a movie if they thought they could make money with it would they? I admit that it could have been partially due to my anticipation of atrocity, but what I saw was a reasonably well-executed horror film with a lot of potential.

I'll skip the long detailed synopsis, but essentially here are my thoughts: Pros: The pacing is done well and the script (for at least the first half) is well-executed. The group of us watching the film found ourselves guessing as to the outcome (and adherence to the short story), and that usually only occurs when something catches our interest. The acting isn't so bad that it becomes distracting and there are some decent dialog moments (no memorable scenes though). The cinematography has a lot of great ideas that I haven't really seen implemented like this... I think most of the potential existed within the cinematography ideas presented.

Cons: Now to the crippling issues. The biggest issue for all of us watching the film was without a doubt the cinematography filter. The movie was so dark, it was literally impossible to see entire scenes on our TV. The contrast is turned up so high that dark spaces appear as dull grey washed-out splotches. Some of this issue could have been due to the LCD TV we were watching on, but the bars on the wide-screen version of the film were darker than the grey splotches that "censored" the movie throughout so it was difficult to allow that excuse.

Asside from that, the script had a lot of "WTF?" moments that I won't go into here. Suffice to say that we often found ourselves saying "why the hell would they do THAT?" The only other issue we had with the film was the direction. I think there is a bit of potential displayed in the direction, but the director also falls for a lot of the B-style pit falls (overly dramatic direction applied to mundane tasks, cheesy character actions, etc.) and just seems to lack a refined vision of mood and setting.

In the end, we all felt that the film warranted a theatrical release, and felt that the rumors must be right. With the quality of other horror films sent to the big screen, this film could easily have contended with the current horror market in the big screen.

I highly recommend watching the film if you can handle periods of film that seek to show you what it would be like to be a blind movie watcher.