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Based on British horror writer Clive Barker’s signature short story, this flashy tabloid take on ‘The Subway Butcher’ occasionally matches its an exquisite brutality. What it lacks is the source’s over-arching mythical dimension and undertow of skin-crawling, mind-curdling horror.
His work dismissed as ‘melodramatic’ by influential gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), frustrated photographer Leon (Bradley Cooper) neglects his waitress girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) and roams the late-night city streets in search of something ‘real’. He finds it on the subway, where silent, suited meatpacker worker Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) dispatches passengers with a shiny steel hammer, hangs them upside down by their ankles, and guts them like pigs.
Sympathetically scripted by Jeff Buhler, but directed like an action movie by ‘Versus’ director Ryuhei Kitamara, the film hurtles towards the final ‘revelation moment’ like runaway train. If only it had stopped to take on board some of Barker’s heavy mythical dread.