Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura, known for films such as Versus and Azumi, directs Clive Barker’s The Midnight Meat Train. This film marks Kitamura’s American filmmaking debut. Kitamura spent a long time looking for his first American movie project, having read nearly 50 scripts over the last five years.

In 2006, Kitamura’s manager set up a meeting with Lakeshore Entertainment’s Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi. Lucchesi told Kitamura they were doing a movie of The Midnight Meat Train and asked if he was familiar with it. “Of course I knew it,” Kitamura says. “It was Clive Barker! I read this original novel exactly twenty years ago, the first Clive Barker book published in Japan, back in 1987. I got the book on the first day it came out and read it. I just loved it.” Kitamura still owns the twenty-year-old Japanese first edition.

Kitamura expands, “I think this is one of the most gory, bloodiest movies ever made. It is a scary movie, but it’s not just about death. It’s about the great relationship between Leon and Maya, which is why I’m doing this. I’m not interested in just showing the blood and gore and splatter; there are too many movies like that. I need story and character and relationship, and this script had all that. So I tried to build that unique vision with my crew, my cast, my producers. I think that is how I put a little bit of my own blood into my film. Technically-speaking, since day one we’ve been not to have a single shot in the movie looks like something else. Everything should be something you’ve never seen before — the angles, the lenses, the camerawork, the look — everything should be something original.”

Midnight Meat Train synopsis

Next stop…death.

When Leon Kaufman’s (Bradley Cooper) latest body of work – a collection of provocative, nighttime studies of the city and its inhabitants – earns the struggling photographer interest from prominent art gallerist Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), she propels him to get grittier and show the darker side of humanity for his upcoming debut at her downtown art space.

Believing he’s finally on track for success, Leon’s obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of serial killer Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), the subway murderer who stalks late-night commuters – ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways imaginable.

With his concerned girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) fearing for his life, Leon’s relentless fascination with Mahogany lures him further and further into the bowels of the subways and ultimately into an abyss of pure evil – inadvertently pulling Maya right along with him.

Midnight Meat Train trailer