“Wanna watch a movie?
Sure, what?
Midnight Meat Train.
Ugh. I don’t like to watch scary movies at night!
You won’t be watching it alone. I’ll be here.
Fine.”
In goes Midnight Meat Train. And so begins my night of terror. As I sit on the couch, watching a butcher hone his craft, I wonder why boogie men have ceased to be monsters. Where are the days of Godzilla’s and Mothra’s? Gone are the creatures from space or black lagoons. You can’t even find a bad guy who kills for moral reasons. Using his killings to knock off the evil, pre-coital, cheating, lying bastards of the world, he serves a true noble purpose.
Now they are all psychopaths. The killings are random. Plus, you can’t just kill someone and move on…no, you must torture them, dismember them, show their entrails to the folks. It is way more disturbing to me then monsters.
There I am, with my hands in front of my eyes.
“What is he doing?
He’s removing his teeth.
All of them? Why?
I don’t know.
Now what’s he doing?
He’s pulling out their fingernails.
Why? Where are you going?
To get a beer.”
He leaves me on the couch alone with no where to look but between my fingers at the carnage. Now he is taking out their eyeballs. Why is the question. They are dead. They aren’t going to be identifying anyone. They are not going to plead for their lives. They are dead!!! So what is with the dismemberment? Is it that as an audience we require our eye candy of filth, to be new every time? Smuched by an elevator…seen it. Eyeballs popped out by woodpecker…seen it. Pickaxe through the crotch…seen it. What is left? And why must we be there to watch it?
Reaching for it, the movie did have a point. Sometimes when good people see bad things, horrific things, the image changes them. They can never be happy ignorant worker bees, living life unaware of suffering and unnecessary pain. And that kind of darkness, invades the hero’s mind and soul. He can’t help but be enveloped by it. I get it. That kind of truth is all around me, everyday, on every channel.
Give me a Saturday morning creature feature any day. I choose to be that cockeyed optimist. I want to see the strings, the edge of the prosthetic hand, the boom mic’s shadow. I get enough of the real darkness on the news. Real life is scary enough. I’ll keep my entertainment dollar for entertainment.
