Praise for Twisted Tales Events

'In the past few years Twisted Tales has become a major force in the promotion and appreciation of horror fiction. As well as putting on author readings and signings at bookshops it has expanded into organising larger events, bringing authors and critics together for discussions of the field. I've been involved in quite a few of both and have found them hugely enjoyable and stimulating - I believe the audiences did as well. May Twisted Tales continue to grow and prosper! If you love the field, support them! I do.' - Ramsey Campbell

‘Twisted Tales consistently produce well-organised events for writers and readers of horror. What really distinguishes Twisted Tales for me is the intelligent themes and investigations they pursue, and the high quality of the discussions they always stimulate. As an author I've been invited to three of their events and have been pleasantly startled, to near shocked, by the attendance levels - two out of three were even sold out. I salute anyone who contributes so much to the literary and cultural life of horror fiction.’- Adam Nevill

'Twisted Tales events are wonderful... a great way of promoting 21st century horror fiction. Supported by Waterstone's Liverpool One and really well organised, Twisted Tales brings together established names in the genre as well as new voices and of course readers. Looking forward to much more to come...' - Alison J. Littlewood

Monday 31 January 2011

Twisted Tales #3 Roundup

On Friday 28th January we had our third Twisted Tales event. After the fantastic benchmarks set by the first two events we always knew we'd have a difficult time with this third event - not being tied into a specific book launch or another event such as Halloween. The support of the people of Liverpool, and indeed the wider area as well, however has bowled us over and the third event was as much a success as the previous two. Below you can see some pictures of the event which featured three authors giving readings: superb Twisted Tales debuts from Alison Littlewood and Joel Lane and a repeat performance from the ever brilliant Conrad Williams. Once again our readers were a joy to work with and we cannot express our gratitude enough, but big thanks also has to go out to the crowd of supporters who came along to hear the readings, ask questions, buy books and get them signed. I'd especially like to thanks Ramsey Campbell and his wife Jenny, Simon Bestwick, Allyson Bird, and Sharon Ring. Last but not least we should thank TTA Press's Roy Gray who sold copies of Black Static and Interzone on the night and helped to publicise the event, the support of such respectable publications and figures from the horror community fills us with confidence that we can keep running Twisted Tales events both in Liverpool and beyond promoting horror into the 21st century.
 
We'd love to get your feedback on the event so that we can improve future ones. Please enjoy the photos below and then leave us a comment or two:

Alison J. Littlewood giving her reading

Joel Lane reading with Alison and Conrad in the background
 
Joel reading to the crowd
Conrad giving his reading

Monday 24 January 2011

The Mist reviewed by Chris Pak

The Mist
Directed by Frank Darabont, adapted from Stephen King (novella)
Released in 2007
Certificate: 15

The Mist is, at its most basic, a monster movie adapted from Stephen King’s novella of the same name. Director Frank Darabont has established a strong reputation for his adaptations of King’s work, having previously filmed “The Shawshank Redemption” and The Green Mile to critical acclaim. In The Mist, a mysterious event opens the town up to an otherworldly intrusion from what is strongly suggested to be another dimension. The mist appears to be streaming from a military complex situated some distance away from the lake town of Bridgton in Maine. The film begins the morning after an unusually strong electrical storm knocks out all power and communication (including mobile phones) in the town. Before it arrives, the artist David Drayton, (Thomas Jane), accompanied by his five year old son Billy (Nathan Gamble) and his neighbour Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), drive to the supermarket in town to replenish their supplies. As the weather worsens the sense of unease grows until several events confirm that there is something amiss, and that the incoming mist might harbour unknown, violent presences. Trapped in the store by the horrifying dangers hidden in the mist, the townspeople are forced to find ways to cope with what is both outside and inside. The supermarket functions as the main setting of the film and works as a crucible in which the townspeople are forced to confront a manifest monstrous menace as well as the dangerous forces unleashed by their own fears.

The townspeople learn from Private Jessup (Sam Witwer) of the rumour that the military’s secret “Project Arrowhead” is concerned with research into the manipulation of inter-dimensional gateways in order to offer military scientists access to other worlds. This appears to be the source of the imaginative bestiary that intrudes into Bridgton, although the exact details as to how this event has occurred are never specified. As such, The Mist is established on (or at least strongly suggests) an underlying science fictional rationale, which lends a veneer of plausibility to the plot. The monsters are varied and give the impression of a complete and autonomous alien ecology, adapted for life in an environment dominated by thick mist, rather than a catalogue of isolated monsters or supernatural entities. Scenes in which creatures of one species feed on another work to both escalate the scale of the dangers and emphasise the ecological (and therefore scientific) basis for their existence. In this way, horror is generated by making these events superficially consistent with a scientific understanding of the world, one effect of which is to remove traditional supernatural explanations that might allow the characters, and the audience, to account for the presence of monsters. This, of course, is no comfort at all, to both the characters and the audience, and for some viewers may even accentuate the horror of the film because these events cannot be dismissed as superstitious fantasy. This alien ecology provides evidence of another world, and its inhabitants threaten to displace life on Earth.

A brief interlude towards the end of the film, in which a few characters attempt to escape the infested town, introduces a transitory suggestion of wonder. A dreamlike sequence (or one more properly induced by shock), in which these characters, led by Drayton, travel through the devastated landscape, introduces a tantalising glimpse of another side to this horrific world. An awe-inspiring vision of a gargantuan creature recalls Lovecraft’s Mythos of a universe dominated by cosmic horrors against which humanity is utterly insignificant. This scene adds depth to the visceral danger that besets the characters, linking fear to a revelatory ecstasy which is the very character of the sublime, as they stand witness to the unknown.

Despite the multiplicity of monstrous antagonists, they are not the primary source of horror in The Mist. Instead, they are the catalyst for tensions between the townspeople trapped within the supermarket. The initial reaction of the men, women, and Drayton’s young son, is an understandable combination of panic and fear, with three leaders emerging and then clashing. These leaders are Norton, a black lawyer from out of town, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a well-known member of the community who is ridiculed for her Christian fundamentalism, and Drayton himself, who convinces several people in the store of the presence of the monsters in the mist. Norton refuses to accept the account given by Drayton and three other witnesses of an attack by a tentacled creature. At first, we are led to expect that the confrontation between Norton and Drayton will dominate the film. Instead, Norton leads a small group of others into the mist in an effort to reach help. Drayton and Norton part as enemies, but they work their differences out rationally and attempt, through persuasion rather than force, to convince others as to the best way of responding to this threat.

However, when the townspeople realise the nature of their plight, Mrs. Carmody’s effort to persuade the others that it is the Biblical End of Days becomes more successful than their measured approaches. She begins to preach to those trapped in the supermarket and soon gathers a following of devotees. When Private Jessup reveals what he knows about the Arrowhead Project, Mrs. Carmody takes this as the platform to launch an anti-science sermon and to use Jessup, and those she deems to be disobeying God’s laws, as scapegoats for the event. However, The Mist is not concerned with exploring a religion / science debate so much as it is with underlining a fundamental aspect of human nature: the tendency for people to turn to easy solutions when civilisation’s securities are stripped away and they are left to ensure their own precarious survival. Carmody directs her followers’ fears against those who dissent with her interpretation of events, leading to Drayton and his followers becoming substitute foci for the townspeople’s reactions to the monsters. Carmody calls for them to be used as sacrificial offerings to the beasts, in order for the rest to be spared.

Carmody’s hypocritical accusations of sin, against Jessup, then Drayton and his followers, allows her to develop a growing power base from which to dominate the townspeople. Only one character openly dissents from Mrs. Carmody’s view of a vengeful Old Testament God on the basis of an opposed New Testament interpretation grounded in compassion and forgiveness, but he is killed early in the film by one of the monsters and thus this critique is not sustained. While Mrs. Carmody’s rise to power seemingly justifies the pessimistic view of human nature voiced by some of the characters, I thought that these particular events were the product of the specific power dynamics in the film. Two schoolteachers: Amanda Dunfrey (Laurie Holden) and Irene Reppler (Frances Sternhagen), offer strong female voices opposing Mrs. Carmody’s religious fundamentalism and her tendency to scapegoat others. Thus, the film goes some way to avoid sexist assumptions that women are more susceptible to irrationality, hysteria and/or insanity.

The Mist is a fascinating portrayal of the power struggles that arise between those people who emerge as leaders in crisis situations. The use of mist to control what is shown on screen effectively creates a sense of lurking danger, and the opportunity it offers for concentrating a group of people and focusing on the way that they interact and adapt to the event makes The Mist an effective study of the intensities of human behaviour. Without a clear antagonist, the community looks within itself to place blame and thus explain the horrors it is experiencing. Although some may find Mrs. Carmody’s extremism excessive, and distrust the speed with which her preaching takes root amongst her followers, the townspeople’s struggle with the nature of reality in a world exposed to the intrusion of inter-dimensional beings forms a convincing basis for their destructive reactions. It is this revelation of the ease with which a forceful leader can instigate the casting off of civilisation’s securities and norms, paving the way for the atrocities that the townspeople commit against one another, which makes The Mist one of the great horror films of the 21st Century.

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Chris Pak is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Liverpool, where he teaches on several undergraduate modules under an Allott Graduate Scholarship. His thesis is focused on the theme of terraforming in science fiction, but he maintains an interest in other Fantastic and Genre Fictions. More information and links to other essays and reviews can be found at www.chrispak.webs.com.

Monday 17 January 2011

Conrad Williams interviewed by David McWilliam

David McWilliam continues his interview series with the brightest lights of contemporary horror with an interview with Conrad Williams. The full interview is online at the Gothic Imagination website but you can read the first few answers here.

Conrad Williams is the author of seven novels: Head Injuries, London Revenant, The Unblemished, One, Decay Inevitable, Blonde on a Stick and Loss of Separation; four novellas: Nearly People, Game, Rain and The Scalding Rooms and around 80 short stories (a number of which appeared in his collection, Use Once Then Destroy). He has won the International Horror Guild Award (2007, Best Novel – The Unblemished) and several British Fantasy Awards (1993, Best Newcomer; 2008, Best Novella – The Scalding Rooms; 2010, Best Novel – One). He lives in Manchester with his wife and three sons.


DM: When you decided that you wanted to write fiction professionally, what was it that drew you towards horror as a genre?
CW: I didn’t decide to write professionally. Being paid to write stories was something of a happy bonus; a bit of a shock, actually. There was a point when I was very young – but already in love with the idea of creating fiction – when I didn’t realise people received money for writing. My first payment for a short story was £5, back in 1988. I have a photograph of the cheque…

I was drawn to horror from an early age. I derived a profound pleasure from being scared. I loved ghost trains. I loved to read the Pan Books of Horror, and the Peter Haining edited anthologies of ghost stories. I was also drawn to the gorier passages in my parents’ book collection. I remember reading the opening five pages of Jaws when I was very young, and later, scenes of decapitation in a novel called Amok (1978) by George Fox, about a Japanese holdout soldier. And I also loved sneaking downstairs to watch old black and white horror films. I’d sit on the landing and be able to see through the crack in the door of the living room. I’d have to beat a hasty and stealthy retreat whenever I heard one of my parents stirring from the sofa. Early films that influenced me were King Kong (1933) – so much so that I begged my parents to buy me a plastic kit of Kong that glowed in the dark (I actually found the thing, here), The Haunting (1963), Psycho (1960), Night of the Demon (1957) and the Basil Rathbone series of Sherlock Holmes films, which were anachronistic and propaganda led, but blessed with superb atmosphere and frightening villains, such as The Hoxton Creeper, who dispatched his victims by breaking their backs with his bare hands. Broadly-speaking, I’m attracted to the way good horror, in books and film, builds tension. I’m also drawn to the idea of ordinary people being placed in extraordinary circumstances.

DM: There is a cinematic quality to your prose that imbues even your most intimate stories with a strong visual quality. Have you consciously adapted techniques from cinematography or do you think that your style might have been unconsciously influenced by the language of film?
CW: I think anybody who is a writer in this visual age cannot fail to be influenced by it. I love film. There’s a part of me that is envious of scenarios such as that enjoyed (endured?) by writers such as Raymond Chandler, who was lured to Hollywood and locked in a room with a typewriter to produce pages for a film. I’m sure it would be a nightmare, but there’s something quite heroic about it too. I enjoyed watching the documentaries that accompanied the films Apocalypse Now (1979), ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse’, and The Shining (1980), ‘Making The Shining’, in which you see, respectively, Francis Ford Coppola and Stanley Kubrick on set, bashing out rewrites.

I tend to visualise my narratives at the same time as trying to fashion something out of sentences. It’s a weird, syncopated practice. I will, if I’m stuck, go off somewhere quiet and think about what happens in a sequence of scenes, playing them through my head like a storyboard. Maybe that bodes well in terms of a book-to-screen scenario. I’d like to think so.

DM: Which writers influenced your early work and how has your continuing reading affected the novels you choose to write today?
CW: When I was starting out, the horror shelves in my local bookshop (a WH Smith in Warrington) were filled with Stephen King and James Herbert. So I started with them, and favoured King. He produced a strong sequence of early novels that included Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), The Stand (1978) and The Dead Zone (1979). For me, his following work never quite lived up to that amazing quartet, although It (1986) and Misery (1987) are later flashes of brilliance. After them I discovered Ramsey Campbell and I consider him a huge influence on my work, not least because much of it is set in the north-west of England, where I am from. Through Ramsey I learned about MR James, one of the few writers who can terrorise me. I liked Clive Barker’s short stories, but not so much his novels, although I did enjoy The Damnation Game (1985) and Weaveworld (1987). And Peter Straub is a criminally underrated writer who is as good as anyone in the field. His novel Koko (1988) is a first-class example of a book that transcends its genre. However, it is away from the more overt horror writers that I found my greatest influences. The writers I turn to time and again are M John Harrison (key works for me: The Ice Monkey (1983), Climbers (1989), The Course of the Heart (1990)), Christopher Priest (The Affirmation (1981), The Glamour (1984), The Prestige (1995)) and Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian (1985), No Country for Old Men (2005), The Road (2006)).

The Road gave me the green light, I think, to write my own post-apocalyptic novel. I had notes going back ten years regarding such a novel, but I felt that my lyrical style might get in the way. But McCarthy showed me that it was possible to write about the most monstrous events in way that is almost poetic. The Road is both the most beautiful and the most devastating novel I’ve ever read.

DM: From London Revenant (2004) on through much of your later work you repeatedly use the city of London as the setting for a range of horrors. Can you tell me why the city holds such allure for you as the locus of so many of your narratives?
CW: Much of that is simply down to the fact that I was living there while I was writing. But of course, London possesses its own resonances, history, punch. It carries some weight in the way that, say, Warrington does not. London becomes another character in a story. People know it, so you can play around with a reader’s perceptions of the city in a way that you can’t with a small, relatively unknown town.

There was something about being an outsider in London that appealed to me, too. I lived in London for 13 years and I was all over the place. I moved a lot. I lived in west London, south London, north London and eventually bought a flat in Stamford Hill. I never felt at home, though. My flat was subject to a quite violent burglary (entry was forced through the ceiling) and I never felt comfortable living there after that.

And London tires you out. Getting anywhere takes time and effort. Travel in the city can be horrendous. People don’t talk to each other. They avoid contact. I owned my flat for four years and didn’t even see the people who lived in the flat next door to mine. There’s a tension in you that you only notice when you get out of the place. Much of that barely reined-in panic is what I’m chasing whenever I write a London novel. The city has its own list of horrors that you have to address as a writer if you want to locate something there. It’s unavoidable.

When I wrote The Unblemished, I deliberately subverted the genre’s tendency to have horrors uncoil in a sleepy seaside village™. The novel starts in some rural backwater, but very quickly the focus changes to London. Because, of course, if you’re a hungry predator you go where the meat is. You don’t plan world domination from a seaside cafĂ© in Bognor.

That said, the new novel, Loss of Separation, is set in a sleepy seaside village™ on the Suffolk coast…


Read the rest of David's interview at the Gothic Imagination site - the world's best Gothic Literature website, hosted by the University of Stirling.

You can also download a free Conrad Williams short story, 'Slitten Gorge' here.


Monday 10 January 2011

Joel Lane interviewed by David McWilliam


Joel Lane lives in Birmingham and works as a journalist. His work in the supernatural horror genre includes three collections of short stories, The Earth Wire, The Lost District and The Terrible Changes; a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone; and a chapbook, Black Country. His articles on weird fiction writers have appeared in Wormwood and elsewhere. Joel has written two mainstream novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; and three collections of poetry, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland and The Autumn Myth. Joel has also edited an anthology of subterranean horror stories, Beneath the Ground, and co-edited (with Steve Bishop) the crime fiction anthology Birmingham Noir. He and Allyson Bird have co-edited an anthology of anti-fascist and anti-racist stories in the weird and speculative fiction genres, Never Again.


DM: What made you want to write horror fiction? What do you consider to be its attractions over other genres and mainstream fiction?
JL: I’ve always loved the emotional intensity of horror fiction – or as I would rather call it, weird fiction – and the power of its metaphors. Weird fiction deals not only with fear but with the things we are most afraid of – mortality, loss, disease, madness, isolation – and it has a special kind of language for dealing with these themes. I’ve written two mainstream novels and various kinds of stories, as well as poetry, but weird fiction is what I always come back to when I feel troubled and need that particular language to make sense of it. Creatively it’s my home ground. The only other genre I feel at home in is the ‘noir’ strand of crime fiction, which has a similar poetic and fatalistic quality to weird fiction, a similar emotional power. I can’t be bothered with plot-driven narratives in any genre: can’t write them and don’t enjoy reading them. Unless, as in something like Robert Bloch’s Psycho, the plot is itself symbolic, so the whole narrative is structured like a myth. That’s great. I want books to explore dark and painful emotional states, and I love the way that weird fiction uses that thematic territory as the breeding ground for its imagery.

DM: Could you elaborate on what you consider to be horror’s ‘special kind of language’ for dealing with the darker aspects of the human condition?
JL: The whole idea of supernatural creatures and experiences brings to life metaphors that clearly have to do with mortality, disease, madness, desire and the unknown. Weird fiction draws on folklore, mythology, dreams and pathological symptoms. It’s a complex and intense cultural response to our deepest fears. In some writers (such as Bradbury) the fears are very close to the surface and the metaphors are relatively easy to interpret, in others (such as Machen) the imagery is more oblique and stands apart from its sources. Using weird imagery in an ambiguous and questioning way is not a recent idea, of course: the genre has always been able to do that, has always had the potential to bend its own apparent rules – because the relationship between the language of weird fiction and the underlying reality has always been a dynamic and changeable one. It’s different for every writer, and every reader.

DM: Which writers influenced your early work and how, if at all, have your influences changed throughout your career?
JL: My early stories – written in my teens – were hapless pastiches of weird fantasy from the pulp era – Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. Fortunately none were published outside my school magazine. Then I fell under the spell of what I thought of as the holy trinity of contemporary British supernatural fiction writers: Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell and M. John Harrison. Writers who used the supernatural as a symbolic framework allied to character psychology and a sense of the modern landscape. Within the clearing established by those writers, I gradually developed a sense of my own themes and language. Further down the line I’ve been influenced by the poetic novels of Jean Genet and the bleak noir fiction of Cornell Woolrich – both deeply obsessive, powerful, disturbing writers. Poets have affected my prose writing as well: T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Edwin Morgan and others. More recently I’ve been influenced by the terse, understated style of such writers as David Goodis and Raymond Carver.  

DM: Your novella The Witnesses Are Gone explores cinema’s ability to alter our sense of reality. How has film altered your perception of the world and the way in which you write about it?
JL: Film has tended to reinforce my visual sense, and so to encourage the dreamlike aspects of landscape and character in my writing. I don’t think it’s affected how I see the real world so much as informed my approach to narrative. I’m always looking for the literary equivalent of those cinematic moments that unsettle your sense of what is going on. The Witnesses Are Gone is about films that leave the audience unsure of what it really is they have seen. Fiction can do that as well – for example, look at the way Machen blurs the distinction between fiction and journalism, and between crafted and ‘naĂŻve’ writing. The boundary between the imagined and the real fascinates me – in relation to film, when you cross that boundary you go from being an audience member to being a witness. That seems to me a vital transition for people to be able to make. If you watch a film, part of you should always be aware of what it would mean if these things were happening in front of you. I don’t believe genre fiction or cinema should be a comfort zone.

DM: On the matter of genre fiction confronting the problems of the real world, I’d like to ask you about the collection Never Again, which rallied weird fiction writers to critique fascist and racist ideologies. How do you envision the anthology engaging with the wider political debates in 2010/11? Is there a danger that you are preaching to the converted, or do you think that the anthology will resonate with people who might have found extreme right-wing views enticing?
JL: The anthology had a complex agenda. Primarily, Allyson Bird (my co-editor) and I wanted to celebrate and stimulate politically engaged writing in the weird and speculative fiction genres. Half of the stories we included had already been published, including stories by a number of leading writers in the field. Our introduction also drew attention to classic writers such as Franz Kafka and Shirley Jackson whose work touched on the book’s themes. We wanted to show that serious social and political issues can inspire strongly imaginative, challenging and unusual fiction. We didn’t include anything that was polemical in an obvious or predictable way. So there was a literary agenda that was deeply rooted in our reading within and around the horror and SF genres.

In addition, we wanted to remind our readers that these issues are still very relevant. Authoritarian culture and violent prejudice are all around us. In recent weeks we’ve seen people engaged in legal and peaceful protest viciously beaten up by police officers… not halfway across the world, but on the streets of London. Fighting fascism and racism is about defending human rights, and that’s a struggle that never ends. So we did hope to politicise some of our readers and make them think harder about what is going on. That’s why, at the end of the book, there’s a list of contact details for anti-fascist, anti-racist and human rights organisations. We’re also donating all profits from the book to three human rights organisations – Amnesty International, PEN and the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

It’s nice to think that some readers might be influenced politically by the ideas in the book, but I don’t seriously expect that any racist would read Never Again, let alone be significantly affected by it. Allyson and I both have experience of political activism, and don’t imagine that a book of stories can do the same work as a political campaign. In the same way, you wouldn’t expect a book of erotic fiction to change society’s attitude towards sexuality – but you might hope that some readers would find the ideas valuable creatively, imaginatively or even practically. We hope readers derive value from Never Again in a variety of ways.  

DM: Moving forwards, what are your writing plans for 2011 and beyond?
JL: Health problems have made creative writing very difficult for me in the last few months, so the immediate priority is to get over that and start writing again. I think matters are improving, so I can talk about writing plans without too much anxiety. One major project that’s near completion is a collection of my supernatural crime stories – I should be able to announce details of that soon, and it will be my best collection so far. I’m also working on a small booklet of crime stories for a West Midlands publisher called Nine Arches Press. Longer-term projects include a book of metaphysical ghost stories, a book of more ‘extreme’ horror stories, a pamphlet of erotic poems and a supernatural horror novel set in the Black Country. That’s five years’ work at least…


Tuesday 4 January 2011

The Midnight Meat Train reviewed by Laura Bettney

The Midnight Meat Train
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Released in 2008
Certificate: 18

The Midnight Meat Train, based on a short story of the same name by Clive Barker, follows the increasingly intertwined paths of young photographer Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper) and the enigmatic, terrifying Mahogany (Vinnie Jones). Leon is trying to further his career; his dream is to shoot the perfect image of the city he lives in. In his mind “nobody’s ever captured it, not the way it really is”. Unfortunately, his meeting with Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), the successful owner of one of the city’s art galleries, does not go well and ends with her telling him that he has so far failed to depict the city truthfully . From this moment on, Leon takes her advice, “the next time you find yourself at the heart of the city, stay put, be brave, keep shooting”, embarking on the night-time shoots that will eventually bring him into contact with Mahogany.

In their first encounter, Leon photographs Mahogany ascending from a subway station late at night and, sensing something unsettling about his subject, follows the man home. However, in a threatening, wordless confrontation with Mahogany, who senses Leon tailing him, he is duly warned away. Believing that he has found some secret aspect of the city’s ecology, Leon then embarks on a misguided and obsessive pursuit of Mahogany, following him to his place of work, a meat packing plant, and down to the subway many times, still ostensibly in search of the picture that will launch his career. As the film progresses we see how Leon’s forays into the deepest, darkest parts of the city begin to affect his life in increasingly strange ways: his dreams become more violent, taking on a prophetic quality; he becomes sexually aggressive towards his girlfriend, Maya (Leslie Bibb); and he develops an appetite for meat, much to the confusion of his friend Jurgis (Roger Bart,) who had previously mocked him for asking the owner of the cafe to cook tofu on his griddle. In these ways, we see the violent secrets of the city slowly begin to change intrinsic aspects of Leon’s personality.

From some of the earliest scenes in the film the viewer knows that Mahogany is brutally killing travellers on the city’s subway system and thus Leon’s instinct to follow him in order to solve a huge number of missing person’s cases is accurate. The scenes depicting these murders are always visceral and demanding; in one, the viewer must endure seeing Mahogany’s methodical treatment of his victim’s bodies in graphic detail. These scenes are stunningly shot under the blazing fluorescent lights of the almost sterile-looking carriages. The gleaming chrome of their interiors serves to make the pools of blood spilled on the floor after each murder unsettlingly reminiscent of abattoirs.

With this knowledge, it is with great trepidation that the viewer finally sees Leon, still in pursuit of Mahogany, board the last train one night at 2:06am. It is on this journey that Leon witnesses some of the murders for himself, watching Mahogany prepare his victims for an unknown purpose with militaristic precision. The butcher strips the corpses of clothing, removes teeth, nails and eyeballs, then shaves their heads before hanging them upside down, like carcasses from the meat-packing plant he works at.

It is only once Maya and Jurgis are forced to become involved in this shadowy life of the city by Leon’s increasingly strange behaviour that the full scope of the conspiracy Mahogany is just a small part of begins to unfold. Realizing that his loved ones have followed his lead by travelling on the fateful last journey of the subway, the danger they face forces a dramatic and violent final confrontation between Leon and Mahogany, which leads to the sublime twist in the last scenes of the film, as surprising as it is, perhaps, utterly inevitable.

The emotional depth seen in the understated performances of leads Cooper and Jones only serves to pull the viewer deeper into the action, making them at once afraid to watch their interconnected fates unfurl, but also too concerned to look away. Cooper’s Leon starts off as a sensitive, fairly naive, but obviously passionate man, following his dream of capturing what he sees when he looks at the city around him. Our belief in Leon, and in his blossoming relationship with his girlfriend Maya, makes the strange transformation that he starts to undergo all the more disturbing to watch.  Jones’s silent portrayal of Mahogany is masterful; the character’s threat is conveyed by facial expression and posture alone. Yet, as with all Barker’s antagonists, there is something intriguing about Mahogany; he is not just a butcher. In private he is a perfectionist, every move of his morning routine regimented and exact: every detail, from the way his suit hangs to the way he packs his bag, seems of great importance to him. His compulsions are, perhaps, the actions of a weary man who is ultimately tired of repeating the same routine over and over again, but has lost all knowledge of who he used to be and, thus, how his life could ever be different. 

The Midnight Meat Train has been thoroughly berated by many critics, often seemingly because of the level of violence on display here.  Admittedly, it would take something rather extreme to force me to decry a film based on its use of gore, but I have to question whether The Midnight Meat Train is really any more violent than the slew of so-called “torture porn” films that were flooding the cinemas around the same time of its release. It certainly does not reach the heights of, for example, Pascal Laugier’s excellent Martyrs (2008), in terms of horrific portrayals of suffering. Rather, what I think is truly disturbing here is not the violence in and of itself, but the reason for the violence; in The Midnight Meat Train, Mahogany’s murders are brutal, methodical, and, as anyone who is aware of the ultimate twist will attest, absolutely necessary. I would argue that it is not the violence, but the sheer pace at which this film hurls itself along a trajectory which leads its main character to confront the darkest parts of himself, that is truly terrifying. The viewer is granted foreknowledge with which to comprehend what is actually happening, which makes the characters’ attempts to fight against the conspiracy seem utterly futile. They have access to Leon’s private uncertainties and increasingly erratic behaviour (even some of his dreams), also Mahogany’s remorseless murders as well as his private weariness, and so know from the moment that Leon begins his dogged pursuit of Mahogany that he is entering a dangerous downward spiral.

The Midnight Meat Train is an intriguing and excellently constructed horror film which packs a surprisingly powerful emotional punch. It is also a fantastic rendering of Barker’s short story, which I always felt could do with a little fleshing out, needing space for its mythology to breathe; Kitamura certainly delivers. The film is proof positive that it is possible to make an intelligent film within the slasher tradition that moves beyond the limitations imposed by studios’ low-expectations for their audiences whilst retaining the thrills that one would expect from the subgenre at its very best.

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Laura Bettney is an Assistant Psychologist with a degree in Psychology with Criminology. She is a lifelong fan of horror working on her first short story. Laura also reviews albums and gigs for the American Indie (in the original Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, and Dinosaur Jr sense) online magazine, Delusions of Adequacy.

Returning from a Christmas hiatus

You may have noticed that Twisted Tales online activity more or less ceased completely for the majority of December, this was the result of me returning home for the holiday season and having limited computer and internet access whilst there. Rest assured however that the Twisted Tales machine was not idle during this time. I've got a whole host of things that need uploading keep checking back for more film reviews, an exclusive interview with Joel Lane (who will of course be at Twisted Tales #3 on January 28th), and so much more!

We've got a great year planned for 2011 and with your support and the continued enthusiasm of the horror community, who  have been so helpful, we can continue our mission to showcase the best horror of the 21st Century.

So, a belated Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and on with the show...

- Glyn