Train: Review By Bryan Yentz

It seems that this is definitely the year for horror-themed train rides. Back in ol’ January, Midnight Meat Train finally made its way down the cinematic rails and hit DVD. Following this was the direct-to-disc flop Night Train which (among others) starred Leelee “I’m-still-here” Sobieski. Then there was End of the Line, which applied some more supernatural elements to the ride, and now there’s Train. Yeah, that’s it---“Train”. Creative, huh? Well, if you’re the kind of reader that said, “Yes---holy sh*t, yes!!!” to that last lil’ question then you might just be stupi---well, “special” enough to watch this caboose a’ torture all the way through and not have a plethora of problems once the credits hit. For the rest: Keep your feet behind the yellow line and avoid the ride.

Onto the story… If you want to call it that.

Have you seen Hostel? Okay, good, cuz I dug that movie quite a bit. Now, take that film, strip all of the creativity from it, the attention to detail, the score by Nathan Barr, the tension-filled direction of Eli Roth, and the mature approach to such horrific and violent content. Got that? Take it all away. Now, leave in the torture, but pointlessly expound on it---now put that on a train! Not enough for ya?! Well, good news! It’s also got atrocious dialogue! A hole-ridden script! Awful acting! Now, how about that---sold yet? No? Oh, okay… Well, in that case, here’s the rest of it… A bunch of stupid stereotypes led by Thora Birch (who’s played the same role since American Beauty) are in Eastern Europe for a wrestling tournament. After the ass-grabbing event is caput, the kooky kids head off to a party. The following morn, they discover---Oh no! They’ve missed their train to Odessa. Thankfully, a creepy woman happens to invite them onto hers. From here, the small group is mercilessly cut down one by one until only Thora remains to exact possibly the tamest, most uninspired revenge in recent cinema.

Now, typically if I were to give anything of somewhat importance away during a review so as to better convey my point, I’d type, **SPOILER**. In this case, I’m not even going to bother as the film has nothing which can be given away since nothing evolves in terms of its narrative structure or character development. All writer/director Gideon Raff cares about is setting his actors up so that he may then throw them so sadistically to the wolves. The movie is bereft of logic and reason and only serves to create more questions the longer it’s on. Beginning my avalanche of vituperation are the characters themselves. For one, they aren’t characters, they are merely sheep led to slaughter… Sheep with awful dialogue accompanied by even worse use of ADR (when audio/dialogue is recorded afterwards---in a studio). One scene has the boyfriend of the bunch attacked during the introductory party when he tries to leave with his friends. Afterwards, his girlfriend played by the immensely dry Thora Birch bitches about him starting the fight and distances herself from him for it. Really? It may seem small (which it is), but these tiny issues happen so much that they become a big problem as they go from unneeded, to questionable, and finally into the realm of absurd. In a later scene, Birch and her gal-pal are approached by two of the grimiest individuals this side of a piss-soaked alleyway. They ask for their passports. And what do the ladies do as the men curve their tongues about their crooked yellow teeth, rub themselves and make salacious grunts? Well, they oblige and hand over their passports---I’m completely serious. This is the point when I was no longer willing to suspend disbelief. What these characters do is so idiotic that there is simply no justification for their actions, other than the fact that Mr. Raff really couldn’t give a crap about them as long as he got to butcher them… And butcher them he did.

Following the baffling decisions made by sheep one through five, each meets a gruesome end at the hands of the train-car surgeon and all others in-cahoots. The meaning behind the madness? Black market organ theft. Yep, these butchers are torturing people for various body parts. First off, all aspects of torture are pointless as this isn’t a business bent on torture, a-la, Hostel. It’s not a means to teach someone a message, thank you Saw---it’s just for marketing organs. So why the hell do these sadists torture their reluctant donors? That right there is a huge problem as there’s no call for any of the grisly content at hand. Why does a young man have to have his back sliced open and his spinal column broken with a hammer and chisel? Why does another have to be awake as his entrails are pulled from his open belly right before having his tongue cut out? And that’s somewhat light compared to what befalls the rest of the protagonists. All I can say is that I am blessed to have a fast forward button. Anywho... With something as delicate as organ removal, it doesn’t make since that the antagonists would so messily maim and torture all in the name of organ selling---that they wouldn’t put the person out of their misery or at least conduct it in a more realistic way such as Turistas did. It’s obvious Raff has no knowledge of the trade which he proposes and only pushes the theme so as to push the barbarity of it all. What’s even worse is that when the baddies do get their comeuppance, it’s passé and dull---it doesn’t make up for what the villains did in the slightest. Let’s see, oh, one gets strangled… One gets set on fire... Yeah… It’s all just rushed because the director already showcased what he wanted to: the torture. Apparently paying the same amount of time to the heroic and redemptive side of things is out of the question. Then again, even if he had, he would have just been trying to polish a turd.

Regarding the film’s technical characteristics is also quite a joke. While the beginning sports some nice cinematography by Martina Radwan and music by Michael Wandmacher, the rest of the movie has no clue as to how to properly utilize anything in regards to the environment they’ve chosen with the train. There is one transitional sequence that’s well-handled and the color-corrected exterior shots do look nice, but none of it is utilized to its fullest potential. My hope with the train was that inventive camera maneuvers could be exploited, nifty chase scenes could occur within and on top of the many cars, the music could build from the beginning into something epic like Jean-Pierre Taieb’s compositions from Frontier(s)… The list goes on and on. Instead, everything just becomes laughable. Green-screen is used to such undesirable and obvious effect, the music becomes a parody of its former surreal and serious self, the sound design becomes jaw-droppingly bad as the filmmakers were actually stupid enough to use the Wilhelm Scream at two points less than five minutes apart (using it once should be a no-no for anything not intended to be a comedy---go to Youtube if you don’t understand). Continuity is broken as one scene has boring Birch swing an axe into an antagonist’s gut. He grabs the submerged blade as she tries to get up---the VERY next shot, the axe is simply being held by the heroine--- no longer cutting anyone as she drops it and runs away. Other portions contain characters that actually appear in one shot during a scene only to disappear in the next---then reappear later… Again, I’m serious.

I could honestly go on (Lord knows I want to) but I think saying that I really hated this movie is enough. I mean, I REALLY hated this movie. Apparently, it was originally destined to be a remake of scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis’s film, “Terror Train”, but that concept was inevitably canned in favor of this one. As a result, we have a film that is pointlessly cruel, horrifically written, sloppily directed, and not only begs---but falls on its knees and pleads with the audience to be as unbelievably stupid as its characters. And… Ah, what the hell, I’m gonna say it: it’s a train-wreck.