Train (I) (2008) User Reviews

Hostel meets Touristas

[doctorgonzo23 · 4/10 · 17 December 2009]

Not exactly sure what I was expecting with this one. I figured, hey, Thora Birch is in this, it can't be ALL bad. A bunch of American kids traveling around in a train getting terrorized in some fashion... sounds watchable. Unfortunately, I was not satisfied.

If my comment title hasn't tipped you off yet, you're in for an hour and a half of equal parts torture porn and survival horror. There's nothing new here and no worth while twists to raise this movie above (or even up to the level of) many similar genre pictures. It seems to meas if all the horror directors have tired of setting their pictures in the rural south, invariably populated with crazed backwoods cannibals and have instead focused on semi-fictional demonic visions of Eastern Europe populated by depraved butchers for hire. The acting is flat and the characters are so unlikeable (not to mention the lack of definition or development) you just can't muster any emotional ties. You won't even find yourself rooting for the bad guy here... you just won't care.

There is one facet of the movie that does seem to shine though. Love it or hate it, the gore in this film is so over the top and just down right rotten and visceral that it will produce a response. The camera does not flinch away... ever. I guess we're all just too complacent as horror fans these days. Gore like this used to be able to carry a film on the merits of the blood spilled alone, as the super bloody extreme cinema was relatively rare, often found only in hard core Asian productions. Now, every movie you watch seems to be teeming with so much of it that we as fans are beginning to demand more than just a slasher guts fest.

There are so many cool horror movies out there that invest their time and effort in delivering more in terms of originality. Unless you're curious, I would seek out something with more depth.

Little more than another forgettable 'torture porn' flick

[wellthatswhatithinkanyway · 4/10 · 16 May 2010]

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

A group of young American athletes head to Germany to compete in a grappling competition, with mixed success. However, a mix up at the railway station compromises their trip home, leaving them stranded...until a mysterious woman offers them all a trip back on her luxury carriage. They are struck by the hospitality...only to find as the journey progresses, they are on a train of psychopaths who want their organs and will stop at nothing to get them.

Train probably forwent it's right to a cinema release on these shores for appearing so generic and predictable. Take a typical bunch of obnoxious American teens (the only one I could make out of any of them being Thora Birch) place them in a plot eerily similar to Hostel and then, add the even more common denominator today of being a typical 'torture porn' flick where the emphasis is far more on blood and gore than genuine scares. And indeed, the film never achieves anything resembling a claustrophobic air of tension or terror, just a stumbling stutter from one clunky set up to the next. Not surprising, given the plot line is so far fetched and implausible from the off set. Nonetheless, it could have managed as a genuinely creepy and atmospheric film...but by selling out and being just another of the many bottom of the barrel 'torture porn' flicks that you could forget about as easy as that. **

If you liked hostel you will like this film!

[cliff-201 · 6/10 · 2 April 2011]

At the beginning of the film i felt like i had seen it a dozen times before, the usual ensemble of college students and a couple of teachers...you know!

However within a very short space of time i was drawn into the storyline of the film, and there actually is a plot to follow!

I hadn't read anything about the film before i watched it so spent most off the film saying "No way!" mostly quite shocked at the content of the film and the implications of the plot...

I don't want to write any spoilers so let me say that it is a thriller/horror well worth seeing and anyone who liked a film like Hostel will like this one too and enjoy it...i did:-)

How can one writer mess up this big??

[dschmeding · 1/10 · 20 August 2009]

"Train" has to be one of the most ridiculous movies ever. The script is such a mess that you can't count the illogical moments and plot holes. First of all it is an obvious "Hostel"-Ripoff... a group of wrestlers goes to Russia for a wrestling contests and drops off for a party in a Russian town which causes them to split with their group and miss their train. From here on you can replace the hostel with a train and the Snuff-fun with organ-reaping. Guess what, they get on a train after a "nice" lady helps them since no one speaks English (of course) and they don't know a word Russian (which helps when being in Russia) and soon some real strange Russian guys turn up while one after the other of the wrestlers goes missing. You get some pretty graphic torture-scenes, mostly shot in the dark and with the typical modern gritty style but the best part is.... exactly that makes no sense when you have a train in your plot with doctors who harvest organs to sell. What we learn off this movie is: - if you harvest organs, keep your victims alive while doing it and pummel them with knuckle dusters and pee on them when capturing them - when removing organs, just tear them out... eyes can be ripped out with funny instruments in one move, hearts are best taken out after sawing open the living victims chest and then looking for treasures with your bare hands... oh yes, and the cut- off penis sure also was of use for some one. - a grown males torn out eyes are best transplanted to an 8year old boy. - Russian thugs are damn evil (partly they look like Lord of the Rings Characters) and powerful... when your heroine hides under the train they just push the train with their incredible Russian power, just to get an axe into the torso for their effort - When you are left in a Russian village, all your friends are dead and a strange mass of people walks through the dark just follow them - Russian thugs look like bears but move like cats, so you never hear them crawling up behind you (about 10 times in the movie), especially not when you are standing in the middle of an empty bridge. - if you aim for modern horror audiences graphic torture and repeated raw punches into womens faces seem to be some kind of recipe for success - when you blow up a train on a bridge and leave a thug on the rails, the part of the train you disconnected miraculously disappears so the thug can be overrun by another train for dramatic effect - if you are lost somewhere in the Russian hills in a country where you cannot communicate... you just return home to the USA, so the lazy director does not have to make up more ridiculous ideas. - if you want to quit wrestling to be a doctor and you live through a gory nightmare like this its just logical that you continue wrestling with a pretty Russian new haircut

I have rarely seen a movie with so many plot-holes and idiotic situations while obviously having some budget and known actors (BTW... the parts where Thora Birch breaks out of heroine character and shows emotions are a mess) and being a totally calculated cash-off on the torture-porn hype. With movies like this you need your directors license revoked for a hundred reasons and its a shame that movies like "Train" are paid for while hundreds of good scripts will never be made into movies. Stay away, far away from this.

Never mind the movie, feel the splatter

[mattbaxter72 · 2/10 · 28 November 2009]

Torture porn is a really overused description, one that tends to be slapped onto anything with a bit of blood and guts which the reviewer didn't like very much. Hostel, for example, is nothing like it; it has a storyline, characters, even a bit of subtext going on there. Real porn is where the splatter has no reason to exist, there are no actual characters, and no plot other than to get us from one splatter scene to the next. Train is genuine torture porn.

Oh, sure, there is an attempt at a plot, but not one that makes any sense. Organ harvesters - on a train? Rumbling through the middle of nowhere, taking out bits of bodies by yanking at them until the connecting tissue snaps? Harvesting tongues, penises, and other not-exactly-transplantable organs? The whole movie is just an excuse to show some graphic, very nasty scenes of dismemberment, shot in leering close-up, and anything else - character, plot, dialogue - is perfunctory at best. The script feels like it was written on the back of a cigarette packet, no one behaves in a remotely sensible way - 'oh look, here's a locked door with copious blood-stains in front of it, let's find out what's behind it by STEPPING OUT OF A MOVING TRAIN AND SMASHING A WINDOW FROM THE OUTSIDE. What school do these kids go to, James Bond High School? Let me say again - I've got no objection to graphic splatter, so long as there's some point to it. If there's no worthwhile story, no reason for the gore to exist, you have porn. This movie, in other words. A nasty, degrading experience made by stupid people who probably think they're pushing some boundary or other. You're not, guys. You're just stringing together a bunch of random scenes of people being chopped up. Well done.

Just one thing before I go - what the hell happened to Thora Birch? Between this and Deadline (also unbelievably awful, though with less people having their skin cut off), is she aiming to be the new Cuba Gooding Jr or something? Please, Thora, fire your agent and start doing actual movies again. Pretty please?

thoroughly unpleasant

[Quinoa1984 · 3/10 · 6 March 2011]

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.

It's not that bad

[hjchuijbregts · 7/10 · 28 March 2021]

Like Somebody already Said If You Like Hostel, You Like This One 2.

Why did I finish this?

[Matt_Layden · 3/10 · 20 December 2012]

Americans go on a train in Europe that ends up being their last ride.

That's this film summed up in one sentence, one boring sentence that actually is more entertaining than the film. This is Hostel meets Turistas on a train. How many times have we seen good-looking Americans (ugly ones never travel) that somehow get caught up in some sick plot about killing for for money, organ harvesting, teaching lessons, etc. These films seem like ANTI-TRAVEL ads, if you leave the states, you're going to die.

The film doesn't bother with a plot, it simply needs to get characters for the slaughter in specific locations so bad guys can do harmful things to them. Films like these are basically an excuse to showcase gore, just like a film such as 2012 is made to showcase special effects. So how do you judge a film that is simply about cutting people up? You judge it on how well they accomplish that, how creative it can be and if it made you squirm. Does Train do any of these things?

Well, characters are beaten, urinated on, cut open, stabbed, castrated, etc. So there is no real creativity going on here. People are simply chained up and then cut open for the most part. Train manages to fall into the horror clichés that have plagued the genre like a sickness. Let's take a look:

1. Characters have a chance to escape, but don't? Check. 2. Characters have a weapon, drop it and leave it instead of using it? Check. 3. Characters give away passports/I.D. to strangers in other country just because? Check. 4. Characters go back to save someone who cannot be saved? Check. 5. Characters have opportunity to kill attacker, but instead choose to simply injure then run away? CHECK.

This film had me rolling my eyes so much I hurt my eyeballs.

Train is a flick you can miss, it adds nothing to the genre in terms of suspense, thrills, gore, entertainment, anything. It will anger you, frustrate you, cause you to rip your hair out. All these things and more!!!!

The real "Horror Express"

[Wuchakk · 7/10 · 19 April 2020]

In Eastern Europe, members of a USA college wrestling team board a dubious train to Odessa, Ukraine. Unfortunately some of the staff has something in mind other than a train ride. Thora Birch and Gideon Emery stand out in the cast.

"Train" (2008) combines "Hostel" (2005) or "Borderland" (2007) with "Transiberian" (2008) plus the Frankenstein-ian element of "Turistas" (2006) and "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" (2008). It's basically "Transiberian" with the so-called 'torture porn' angle ('torture porn' being slasher/splatter flicks taken to the next level of extreme).

Movies always amp-up reality to entertain or shock and "Train" takes advantage of the fear of being a foreigner in an Eastern Europe country, like Russia or Ukraine, and falling prey to sinister people named Boris, Ivan or Natasha. This should no more be offensive to people from Eastern Europe than "Deliverance" (1972) is offensive to people of the Deep South.

To be expected in this type of movie, there are some unpleasant and even nasty elements, but that's intrinsic to the horror genre, and particularly this sub-genre: True horror flicks are supposed to horrify the viewer. Beyond that, this is basically a real-life adventure story that turns increasingly terrifying. On that basis, "Train" delivers the goods.

The film runs 1 hour, 34 minutes, and was shot in Sofia, Bulgaria.

GRADE: B

dumb senseless torture porn void

[pankuleczka · 1/10 · 1 February 2010]

Oh my god, i don't know where to start. You finish this movie and you feel empty. Feel like someone stole you an hour and a half and gave nothing in return. I - as a matter of fact - feel angry. Have you seen Hostel or Touristas? Then there's literally NOTHING that will surprise you in this pile of crap. The filmmakers should be sued for plagiarism. All of the characters are two dimensional, underwritten, unlikable and act stupid as hell. One time they have one of the villains on the floor, he's slow like a freaking drugged mule that fell into a swamp, there's FOUR of our "heroes" (ok, two of them kinda disabled), plenty of tools around and what do they do? Run away. That's right, leave those two and yell terrified "there's no time!". I laughed out loud in disbelief. I've seen it before, but never, EVER, executed that badly before. In that moment i gave up rooting anybody. Just die, please, all of you. End this farce. Honorable mention: use of stock sounds. Gave me more laughter. That's how you identify quality movie. Use the most generic stock sounds.

great movie

[anth_anderson · 8/10 · 19 August 2009]

i just watched this film tonight and really enjoyed it. OK yes people have different tastes but if you are after an all out horror with action through out then this should deliver. if i have to compare it to another film then i would have to say the hostel movies are similar only this is on a train, and the actors in hostel were largely unheard of as are the actors in this but hostel seemed to go down well and so should this. give it a go, i think 99.9% of horror fans will like this.....quite a lot and those who just hide behind a cushions will hate it but then those are the same people who cry when they see a moth. i can't see a bad review on this folks so go enjoy, it must be good because this is m first comment ever

Not bad at all

[chapsmack · 6/10 · 31 August 2009]

For fans of gore with a not so bad of a story line this is quite a decent movie. Although "decent" might not be the right word in this kind of a movie since it is anything but! There may be some loopholes but all these are if you are thinking excessively. See the movie for what it is, and the movie lives up to it's name for a low budget production. Although Thora Birch might not really be my ideal kind of a revenge seeker, I did like the turn about in the end. I was wishing they could have started off with the revenge plot already as I did like the vengeance seekeing scenes which were less drawn out than the punishment inflicted by the villains. 6/10.

Don't even bother

[xbratter · 1/10 · 30 August 2019]

I seriously stopped watching over halfway through to create an account here so I could complain and warn people about this sorry movie. And I rarely stop watching a movie completely. What makes this extra sad is that I love gory movies. I love Hostel, which this movie makes a pathetic attempt at copying. This thing really sucks. It's uninteresting, no character development, no creepiness, no emotions. There is lots of gore but it's sloppy and leaves you feeling scammed. With Hostel, they made it exciting because you knew gore was coming but they built you up to it and made it fun to be all queasy and grossed out. And you felt bad for the characters getting slaughtered. This junk just jumps into it and it's completely void of any excitement or tension. Just a bunch of guys carelessly hacking into people you don't really care about. Wikipedia doesn't even appear to have an article about this movie which says a lot. Avoid this mess.

Train (2008)

[morrigan1982 · 2/10 · 11 September 2009]

I like B-movies and most of them I find entertaining. They make some sense and they make me laugh some times, but this movie didn't make any sense at all. I like gore, but I also like to understand what is happening. Maybe the idea was not so bad; the script though didn’t make much sense. Trapped in a train with a bunch of crazy people and they can not help them selves at all. Why? They are athletes. They couldn’t do some damage? Not even something small? They could use sooo many stuff as weapons but they prefer to run and let themselves get caught. When you see what will happen to you if you get caught and you know that you will suffer a lot before you die, wouldn’t you prefer to jump off the train? Than at least you will have a chance of survival? I won’t even start about a bunch of other stuff that just weren’t right because than I would spoil it for those brave souls who will see it. The acting was bad. The director… made me dizzy! Why should you take a shot up side down in a movie like this? It is not about art when it comes to this film. Art has nothing to do with it. Poor choice of shots. Maybe it could be better. We will never know. But the result was so bad. I would not waste my time if I where you. “Hostel” was great, I loved it. This is not “Hostel” and it has a little to do with it. Some ideas you might find them the same. But I fail to see the resemblance.

Enough Xenophobic Horror Already

[boy_in_red · 4/10 · 14 March 2010]

When Hostel was released I found it to be an interesting twist on the likes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Hills Have Eyes, playing on the fear of being outside one's normal environment, but exchanging the backwoods for Eastern Europe. Even back then, however, I noted the American-centricity of the film.

Since then we have had Hostel II, Turistas (known as Paradise Lost here in the UK), and now we have Train- another in this unfortunate sub genre that shouldn't be called Torture Porn, but rather "Don't be Leavin' America!" Because yet again those poor beautiful Abercrombie And Fitch mannequins are under threat by Eastern Euopeans who want to take their organs.

A film I recently enjoyed was Saw VI. Yes- seriously. The sixth part in a series of horror films and it still felt fresher than this film. Why? Probably because it quite cleverly, highlighted the brutality inherent in the medical insurance system of care in the US, and selfishness of banks practically handing out risky loans that has led us to this economic crisis. This was a horror film brave enough to assess America's own problems.

In contrast films such as Train are contemptuous of all things non- American. It makes me wonder about the the directors of these movies- did they take their middle-American rite-of-passage trip to Europe as students- backpack around? At what point did they decide to cinematically urinate on the countries they visited? The film itself is bland, feels cheap and thinks revealing a character's pierced nipples counts as character development. Thora Birch looks annoyed at having signed on- I'm pretty sure there are moments her face screams "I was once in American Beauty." And let's be grateful this film was about Eastern Europeans stealing organs, because if it was about bottling charisma or likability, no one would have died.

This isn't a movie this is a snuff film..

[jamesoshea91 · 2/10 · 5 September 2009]

I consider my self an avid horror fan and can sit through anything but when it comes to a movie like hostel then i find myself turning away,much like i did with this rip off of hostel. I don't know what is so appealing about sitting for over 90 minutes and watching people being tortured,in my opinion horror has sunk soooo low its unbelievable, Hollywood has run out of ideas so they resort to torture, what makes it worse is that it barely has a story, couple of kids get caught on a train, and on this train is a bunch of people harvesting people for organs, now i know what you thinking it must be hard to operate properly riding on a bumpy train, but no thats OK because the easy way it to make a cut in you then rip you apart with your bare hands just tear those organs out of you the old fashioned way.

So we have kids having fun on a train then we have the main characters boyfriend getting caught and murdered and then a search starts and during that search they get picked of one by one, get tortured then we have the running away then the torturing then the last guy standing smacks the villain with a weapon and instead of killing him off,guess what...he runs away inevitably getting caught and killed and then there's torture, a girl hanging by her mouth on a hook while missing a leg.

So there torture, running,screaming,knuckle dusters to th face,baseball bats to the head, more running more screaming and guess what more torture. I don't see the appeal sitting watching organs getting pulled out and mince human meat all over the place, its disgusting and un-entertaining, if your squeamish don't watch i found myself gagging.

It makes you wonder, if you enjoy this, would you have any problem watching a real snuff film?? Or would you even know the difference??

Hostel on a train

[doughnutboy20 · 6/10 · 23 August 2009]

Not a bad little horror really, if you want a horror with lots of gore and violence and not much in the way of story. Probably would be good for a night in with some beers and some mates.

The acting is good, I suppose for this sort of film. Thora Birch didn't make the film, but didn't ruin it either, so I suppose you can't ask much more than that from your lead.

Obviously darker than some other horror films out there, with many grisly deaths in the film, but at least you don't have to concentrate to hard.

To summarise, the pros out-way the cons and I have to give it a 6 out of 10. But I can't help but wonder, if it had turned a bit more away from the whole Hostel type image, the film might of been a cult cracker.

But was still good and very, very violent (but no reason to try and censor it Lionsgate).

Almost gave me diabetes

[lamboale · 1/10 · 23 February 2021]

Not only was it incredibly unrealistic and disappointing, it had no character development. I have never commented before, but this was so bad that I had to comment for the sake of other humans

Poor Rip-off

[Michael_Elliott · 28 April 2010]

Train (2008)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Originally this thing went into production as a remake of TERROR TRAIN but somewhere along the lines it turns into yet another HOSTEL rip-off. A group of American wrestlers are in a foreign country when they get on a train, which of course turns out to be ran by a bunch of nuts. These nuts kidnap foreigners and kill them in order to supply their organ transplant company. This thing has earned the fake title of HOSTEL ON A TRAIN as we're served yet another "torture porn" flick that has very little imagination outside of ways to torture and mutilate someone. If you're into that type of thing then you might find something worthy here but if you like good film-making or brains then more than likely you'll be out of this one by the forty-minute mark. This movie tries hard to be as sick as possible as we get countless scenes of bloody violence but we also get a gang rape sequence and another one where a guy is raping a dead person. Oh yeah, we also get a scene with two of the creeps peeing on a guy to wake him up. There's no doubt that the screenplay is extremely weak because it offers up nothing new and there's one major plot hole after another. It gets so bad that you really have to wonder if there was a screenplay at all. We also have the bad screenplay trademark of characters poorly written and unlikeable. I'm not sure what's happened to the horror genre over the past ten years or so but does anyone else remember when we liked the characters we're watching? The cast is pretty much forgettable but it is somewhat shocking to see Thora Birch playing in a film like this. If you can buy her as a wrestler then I guess you'll enjoy her performance. Those wanting gore are going to find a lot of it here. The MPAA slapped an NC-17 rating on this thing before it's theatrical release fell through and it went straight to DVD. There's no question that's the right rating as we get some pretty graphic stuff. The opening sequence shows us a guy getting skinned before being ripped apart. There's all sorts of violence and gore that will appeal to gore hounds. The horror genre has been full of rips from the the 1930s and on so there shouldn't be anyone shocked that producers are lining up to rip something like HOSTEL. It seems each week we're getting some sort of rip and this one here went straight to DVD for a reason.

My gosh, it's not that bad

[chellewinne · 7/10 · 28 February 2023]

If you like movies like Hostel, Turistas, and Green Inferno, then Train will be a guilty pleasure too. The characters are not fully developed, Thora Birch's (the only actor you will most likely recognize) and the remaining actors' acting is horrendous, and the gore seems over the top, but let's be honest here; we're not expecting to see the next Oscar contender when we watch this film. This movie has the makings for a half decent horror film. - detestable villains, - gore, - characters that you don't care if they live or die and characters that you get attached to (that would be Willy for me), not-needed-to-advance-the-plot nudity, - and a lot of "shhh, be quiet" and "don't go over there" moments to the predictable jump scares. If you don't come into the watching this film with any expectations, and you'll have a good time watching this film if you are a horror fan.

Jane stop this crazy thing

[movieman_kev · 1/10 · 6 February 2010]

A group of American high-school wrestlers in Eastern Europe decide to sneak out from their hotel for the night to go to a rave thus missing their train. They have to take a train suggested by a shady lady instead (because the coach nor any of the students, in typical movie 'ugly American' cliché, speak a lick of Russian any the foreign lady speaks fluent English). Oh and the people who reside in the train in question slaughter stupid Americans.

Originally planned as a remake of the Jamie Lee Curtis-starring minor cult classic '80's film "Terror Train", I shudder to think how mind-numbingly atrocious that would have been because what it morphed into ("Hostel" on a train) is so sheerly incompetent and utterly unwatchable that I can't even grasp what the alternative to this swill would've been. Thora Birch single-handedly destroys any good-will I had for her after "Ghost World" with this bottom of the barrel derivative waste of film. Everything about this movie is just plain dumb.

Eye Candy: an extra gets topless

My Grade: F

Lionsgate DVD Extras: A 14 minute Behind-the-scenes featurette; Promos for Fear.net, Break.com, After Dark Horrorfest 3 & Ghost House Underground films; and trailers for "Frontier(s)" & "Captivity"

This is the reason why you don't travel to Russia

[Topaz1922 · 8/10 · 11 October 2020]

Although it was just another torture flick, it was watchable. Although I screamed at the tv "WTF? Why would you do that?" in response to the stupidity of the characters' choices, it was a decent movie. I'd watch it again.

Interesting twist on the Hostel formula!

[andrewtragedy95 · 6/10 · 11 March 2019]

Wow, I'll start off by saying I think some people on here have really slammed this movie. I don't quite get why. Horror and action movies are pretty much all I watch so I knew what to expect going into this one, and it definitely delivered for me! Gideon Raff has created a really brutal and claustrophobic environment here. There are some really white knuckle scenes, for example when the blonde woman tells the torturer to "keep him steady" Oh man, I couldn't help but flinch. Thora Birch is easily the highlight of the film though and plays her part really well. There were a few moments that looked truly uncomfortable and nasty to film but she seemed to play it off like a total pro. I'm happy to hear she's acting again and it's be great to see her in another horror flick like this. If you're a gorehound like me though, add this to your list and check it out no matter what. The only reason I rated a 6 and not higher is because some of the CGI (specifically towards the end of the movie) was laughably bad. Glad I bought this one though, and I'll probably check it out again sometime down the road.

Naff Hostel wannabe

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 7 September 2014]

TRAIN is a one-note film with a one-note idea: somebody, somewhere said "let's make HOSTEL and set it on a train". The project was greenlight, and this movie was born, a vehicle for former Hollywood starlet Thora Birch produced by her former porn star father, Jack.

And, unsurprisingly, it turns out to be pretty rubbish. This is low budget, xenophobic nonsense throughout, shot in Eastern Europe and happily ripping off HOSTEL left, right, and centre. The story goes that a group of American gymnastics students are stranded abroad and suckered into boarding a decidedly dodgy train, where the usual shenanigans arise. This is a torture porn film and nothing else, so whether you enjoy it or not depends on how much you like seeing people getting bits snipped off them at frequent intervals.

The film boasts poor acting, one note characterisation, and bad direction. Thora Birch is just about adequate as the heroine, but the rest of the cast aren't up to much - apart from Gideon Emery perhaps, as the only distinctive one of the group (he's playing a gay, dope-smoking elder who hooks up with the rest). The villainous motivations are ludicrous, and the film really drags despite the plentiful action and many death sequences. I was also surprised at the sheer number of plot holes and goofs along the way, which indicates it was probably written and rushed out in a hurry to cash in on the success of the (thankfully) short-lived "torture porn" genre. In any case, it's a dog of a film.

Leave your brain at the door

[acidburn-10 · 4/10 · 13 February 2011]

Okay this movie certainly won't win any awards or make Thora Birch a star again, but this movie is quite fun and okay, although the premise is unbelievably stupid and way too far fetched. This is one of the few slasher movies that have came out in recent years that isn't a remake, although this is what started out as a remake to 1980's Jamie Lee Curtis slasher "Terror Train" kinda morphed into it's own movie.

The plot = A group of teens (the usual 20-30 something cast), who are on the school wrestling team, miss they're train to Odessa, after a local woman helps them by leading them to another train that's heading to the same location, as soon as they board the train they started getting picked off one by one, by a mad doctor whose using them are live organ donors.

Come on I mean okay maybe internal organs can be used, but how can tongues and penises be used again, that is just stupid, and the fact that everyone else on the train just sits there doing nothing while these teens are being chased and hacked to pieces extreme stupidness of the lead characters and flaws in the script that cause bizarre situations, I mean talk about leave your brain at the door. This just feels like Hostel part 3 and has absolutely no intelligence whatsoever to it, but it does have some great gore and chilling death scenes.

All in all, I gave this movie a 4 because of the gore and great death scenes, other than that this movie has nothing going for it, and it's also sad to see someone as talented as Thora Birch just going through the motions in this it seems as though she has given up.