MusicChat
It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.
Kirandeep Yoder
The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Jackson Booth-Millard
This was originally supposed to be a remake of the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis movie Terror Train, but it later evolved into an original project, it was a film I had seen the DVD cover many times, so I guess I had to see it. Basically in Eastern Europe, a group of American college athletes are competing in a wrestling championship, the team are led by Coach Harris (Todd Jensen), and the students include Todd (Derek Magyar) and his girlfriend Alex (American Beauty's Thora Birch), Sheldon (Kavan Reece), Claire (Gloria Votsis), and young assistant coach Willy (Gideon Emery). Following a hard match they spend the night drinking heavily, this means that the following morning they miss the train to Odessa. A seemingly friendly woman, Dr. Velislava (Koyna Ruseva), shows them another train that they can board, two workers are seen taking all of their passports and burning them. Soon enough the coach and students realise there is something dodgy going on, one by one they disappear on the train, all ending up in a dilapidated room, and severely injured. Dr. Velislava is carrying out a deadly series of operations on the students, cutting them open and tearing them apart whilst still alive to dissect their organs, to be sold and transplanted to patients. After some time of the students being captured and tortured for their organs, and passengers on the train apparently in on the horrible scheme, Alex is the last living survivor of the terror, in the end she is seen escaping the train by uncoupling the carriage, and later returns, having recovered from the events, to fight a wrestling match with grim confidence. Vladimir Vladimirov as Vlad, Valentin Ganev as Conductor Vasyl, Ivan Barnev as Gregor, Nikolay Mutafchiev as Vasily and Miroslav Emilov as Ishtav. Birch is not all that convincing as the emotionally drained heroine who watches all her friends become unwilling organ donors, it probably wouldn't have made any difference if it was set on a train or not, apart from some of the gory moments it is not scary, predictable and uninteresting, thank goodness it got limited release in film festivals and went straight to DVD, a disappointing horror. Adequate!
kapelusznik18
***SPOILERS*** Re-make of the 1980 horror flick "Terror Train" that has this US wrestling team on its way to Odessa in the Ukraine for a match who get kidnapped on this train run by the evil train conductor Vasyl, Vlentin Ganev, and his boss the zombie like and undernourished looking Dr. Velislava, Koyna Ruseva. As we or the members of the US wrestling team soon find out they the members of the wrestling team, in them being in perfect psychical condition, are candidates for Dr. Velislava's human organ project with them, against their will, being the ones who donate their human organs.That all leads to some of the most gory scenes in the film with the members of the wrestling team being man as well as woman-handled by Dr. Velislava's goons the mentally unbalanced & sadistic duet tag-team of Gregor & Vasily, Ivan Brenev & Nikolay Mutafchiev, as well as her clean-up or mop & sponge man Vlad aka "Big BoBo", Vladimir Valdimirov. It's the straight laced coach of the wrestling team who's motto is never have sex before a wrestling match Coach Harris, Todd Jensen, who gets chopped first! That's by giving into the emaciated looking Dr. Velislava's bathing beauty charms as well as being drugged by her so he can't see straight.****SPOILERS**** With the entire wrestling team kidnapped beaten and eventually chopped up and put into cold storage, for their human organs, it's the plucky Alex or Alexandra, Thora Birch, who finally puts her foot down and takes on Dr. Velislava and her goons single handedly. With all the blood and gore up until then the ending of the movie is even gorier as Alex gets to work by first giving Dr. Velislava a major hot foot as well as torching her mobile, on the train, secret laboratory. With Alex who's barley able to stand up, after the beating she went through, taking out the evil Doctor Velislava and her entire crew she's confronted by the back from the dead "Big BoBo" Vlad whom she had to have the help of a train locomotive to finish him off!
lnichol9
I feel bad for Thora Birch, having to be in this movie. First of all, the holes in the plot are glaringly obvious. It starts out decent enough with the wrestling match and semi-decent storyline. Once the team misses their first train, having snuck out the night before to party, you could tell that the Russian woman who was tantalizing the coach was the main 'bad guy'. The gist of the movie is the train's purpose is the black market for harvested body parts. Near the end, Alex see's a little Asian boy and realizes he has her now dead boyfriend's eyes. What has me feeling bad for Thora Birch is one minute she's running from the grotesque conductor and suddenly she's coming out from underneath a bed in a compartment. That makes no sense. My hand to God, this has to be the worst movie I've ever seen. Most of the movie is shot in near pitch darkness, so much so that you can't tell what's going on because you can't see!!! That is so frustrating to me and I'm sure lots of other people. I couldn't figure out how Alex is going to get somewhere safe. She's in Russia and her passport has been burned. This whole movie - sucks. I'm so thankful I didn't pay to watch this. A free preview of Cinemax, recorded. Don't waste your time or money.
MisterWhiplash
I probably should have known this was going to be, or at least akin to being, "torture porn", or the gratuitous slicing and dicing of people without any of the suspense, but I didn't expect this low-rent movie starring Thora Birch to be just so unpleasant, in its style and mood and its delivery. It doesn't help that the cast mostly looks like the understudies of other actors (that one guy is a dead ringer for Denis Leary, another one for European Cameron Diaz) and none of them can act very well (Birch, of course, being a master thespian of under-acting if that's possible). But any moment that a suspenseful walking/creeping around should work it doesn't, and any moment that we're supposed to be icked or frightened by the next gashing-out of blood is just stupid in its excessiveness. It also doesn't help at all that the logic is twisted; there's a train that kidnaps unwitting people into using their bodies on the black market, okay, I'll bite, maybe it's like Taken on a Train (ho-ho). Even then there's little thought put into it; they're organ-removers basically- a little like the people in Hostel only providing a "service" albeit extremely criminal and psychopathic and with some of the usual big galuts in tandem. But what about what's usually done with organ removing and transplanting like, I don't know, a CLEAN ROOM! It's one thing to be evil East-Euro organ removers, it's another thing to be incompetent while doing it. Also, the ending is one of the lamest in modern cinematic memory, even if it's straight-to-video. There's little to recommend about it except for a few (unintentional) laughs early on before the Olympic team gets on the train and parties down at an overly-red-lit nightclub.
