The Midnight Meat Train Review

Messages: Any possibly positive message is washed away in the crimson tide of bloodletting that it unleashes in the name of extreme "thrills."

Role models: The main character, a photographer, takes pictures of a group of youthsthreatening a young woman before he acts to stop them. Anothercharacter, researching a city's history of crime, contrasts her workwith the popular perception of the past as a kinder, gentler time bynoting "it turns out there never were any good old days." A securityguard checks a character's bag in the subway, noting that "ConditionOrange means I can search whatever I want."

Violence: Constant, brutal, and explicit violence, including endless buckets of blood. Brutal murders are portrayed in graphic fashion, with weapons including a butcher's hook, a hammer, knives, guns, and bare hands; other weapons include severed limbs, bones, and skulls. Multiple scenes of intense fighting, with characters punched, head-butted, slammed into windows, walls, the floor, and more. Deep and bloody wounds are created and shown. Throats are slit; multiple stabbings; a character's head is impaled with a long knife; a character's tongue is ripped out of their mouth and then eaten. A man is struck with a hammer so hard that his eye dislocates from its socket; a female character's demise is shown from her point of view, beginning with a hammer blow so fierce it severs her head -- viewers see her headless body from a distance through her eyes as she dies. Human beings are hung like meat, dangling upside down by hooks rammed through their flesh; their teeth, fingernails, and eyes are shown being removed post-mortem. A character removes (and then keeps) bizarre growths from his flesh by slashing at them with a knife. A heart ripped from a human chest is held aloft while still beating. Piles of dead bodies are seen; animal and human corpses are hung as raw material for butchers.

Sex: Some kissing; discussions of sex in the context of a committed relationship; some nudity, including a nude female murder victim. It's suggested that a supporting character is promiscuously bisexual. Brief phallic imagery. A young woman, threatened by a group of thugs, is told "You gotta pay on your knees, baby." Characters have rough sex, with the clear implication that this isn't the norm for them.

Language: Some, including "f--k," "motherf---er," "s--t," "ass," "bitch," and "s--t."

Consumerism: Not an issue

Drinking, drugs and smoking: Friends drink hard liquor in celebration; beer and wine are enjoyed at an art reception.