By Jason Haskins
Red State is Kevin Smith’s departure flick. After almost twenty years of building his empire of movies with connected stories (his Viewaskewniverse) and conquering most forms of media including comic books and redefining what podcasting is capable of, he returns to film in a big bad way with a whopper that is completely different from everything he’s done before. He set out to finance the movie for an independent $4 million dollars and make a small movie that would be the spiritual successor to his only other indie flick, Clerks, back in 1994.
The movie begins very Smith-esque with three teenagers talking about sex and all that jazz you’d expect in one of Smith’s movies, but then it abruptly shifts into something different. These boys are out for sex and are going to meet up with someone from the internet who’s promised them a good time. Trouble is, it’s actually a rouse to kidnap them and bring them back to a family-oriented church reminiscent of Fred Phelps’ clan and teach them a lesson—perhaps make them fear god. Rather quickly the movie gets out of control and leads to a large shootout/hostage situation.
While it’s being billed a horror movie, it’s not necessarily one. There are a few moments that are terrifying just because of the sheer nature of what’s going on. Crazed religious fundamentalists causing tons of damage led by Michael Parks as Abin Cooper—the head of the church. There’s a ton of violence as well, most of which is actually originally implemented to be shocking and interesting.
While it definitely is a terrifying movie at times, it snowballs into familiar territory as it adopts this formulaic attitude midway through the movie. It shifts abruptly from comedy into darkness pretty quickly, which was great, but Smith still throws in these little bits of humor that I felt downgraded the overall tone he was trying to accomplish.
Clearly the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino were a huge influence to Smith and his cinematographer David Klein on the visual aesthetic of the movie. Shot using the RED technology, the shutter speed is super duper quick and gives us this disorienting feeling that all of the characters are going through, but also showing us this demented nature of the beast. The action sequences were pretty cool and the torture scenes were particularly well done. They were shocking, terrifically acted by Kyle Gallner, and vividly colorized to give this drowned out look that spirals out of control as the movie continues.
The sound design was also extremely well put together and led to the most ‘jump’ moments, but the whole movie throws these random curve balls that are quite surprising and interesting. There’s virtually no score except for some loud ambient moments to heighten the impact of what happens on screen every now and then.
The performances are a mixed bag. Gallner and the other two guys were very good in this movie and strangely likeable despite the lack of character development. Michael Parks should get an Oscar for this role, which is probably the most original villain in a long time. I mean, there’s something eerie about this murdering church nut who plays piano and sings and is completely lost in his own chaos. John Goodman has a large role as an ATF agent and I love me some John Goodman, but he was horribly miscast here and overacts around every corner, which was a big letdown.
It was cool to see Kevin Smith branch out to new territory and try something completely different to keep his detractors at bay. This is probably his strongest attempt at direction and it shows. It’s surprising and interesting, fast-paced, but at the same time lacks an umph it really needed to set it apart from other movies. The $4 million budget was used extremely well and it looks very well put together. Supposedly this is Kevin Smith’s second to last movie and after the amount of enthusiasm and creativity he put into this it’s quite a shame to see him leave, but if his next picture Hit Somebody embodies the same sort of stark contrast to his body of work such as this one, he’ll leave on a high note.
© Jason Haskins, 2011
3.5 out of 5 Stars
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