Like many future movie stars, Bradley Cooper had some early appearances in horror roles like Tom Cruise, find it harder to make horror movies after success comes calling, but for many, these parts are simply a stepping stone to bigger things.
Whether it’s Brad Pitt in Cutting Class or Bradley Cooper in a trio of lesser ‘00s horrors, most major actors have a few horror movies to their names. For actors like Pitt or Cooper, these parts are a paycheque and hopefully a chance to prove their versatility onscreen. Often, these early parts are ones they look back on with a mixture of embarrassment or nostalgia - like George Clooney’s short-lived Return to Horror High character who is, ironically, a smug young actor certain he’s destined for more than mere horror movies.
Nowadays, Cooper is best known for Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, Cooper had a handful of early, gory horror outings to his name. So, how do these movies rank in comparison to each other?
Case 39 (2009)
Coming in last is 2009’s Case 39, a forgettable and unforgivably bland killer kid movie that boasts none of the guilty pleasure appeal enjoyed by the same year’s Silent Hill fame) on a boring, predictable, and scare-free ghost story.
My Little Eye (2000)
Stronger than Case 39, My Little Eye is an early internet-based horror that doesn’t have much else going for it. The story, which sees five strangers spending a month in an isolated mansion while being live-streamed, is a horror twist on the then-hugely popular reality series Big Brother, and the premise has plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the lack of character depth makes the victims difficult to care about, and the impressively nasty tone is wasted on a movie that lacks any real urgency. From the opening credits, it is clear viewers are in for a bleak, brutal finale, and Cooper’s brief appearance as the mysterious programmer Travis can’t do much to salvage the predictable plot.
Midnight Meat Train (2008)
Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, Midnight Meat Train is one of those singularly satisfying horror movies that is not at all the movie viewers think they’re watching. To say more would be to ruin the movie’s effectiveness, but suffice to say Cooper plays a photographer who becomes obsessed with a mute murderer he sees offing people on the titular late-night train. For much of its runtime, this stylish slasher - based on the short story by Hellraiser scribe Clive Barker - follows Cooper’s attempts to bring Vinnie Jones’ hulking killer to justice, but late in the game, a twist sends things in a darker, more Lovecraftian direction. Midnight Meat Train is a genre gem that is well worth a watch, and comfortably the best of Bradley Cooper’s triumvirate of horror offerings.
