This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

Red State [Blu-ray]

Kevin Smith, famous for his View Askewniverse and playing Silent Bob, made more of a name for himself when he auctioned off the distribution rights to his new horror movie Red State only to end up deciding to distribute himself. Was it a marketing ploy all along, or maybe it was genius? Either way Smith steps into a very different world as he releases Red State, a film that isn’t entirely sure what it wants to be.

Red State starts out with three teenage boys looking to get laid. Using the internet they find some poor girl willing to take all three of them on at the same time so they pay a visit to her trailer. Things take a sudden turn however when the boys get drugged and taken to a church run by Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). Two of the kids are wrapped in cellophane in a basement whilst another is caged in the church, forced to listen to Abin preach about the vengeance of God for a solid twenty minutes.

As the sermon reaches a conclusion, Pastor Cooper sends the children outside as things are about to get a lot more grown up. He reveals a sinner strapped to a cross and in front of the congregation and the petrified teenagers, kills him in cold blood. The caged teen is next but the two in the basement manage to struggle free and a rescue (or not) is afoot.

Fair play to Kevin Smith for trying something different, many directors get pigeonholed into one genre or another, look at Emmerich for example. Whilst his last movie Cop Out was a step away from his comfort zone into a more mainstream marketplace, it was still a comedy (of sorts). Red State is much different. Whilst Smith bills it as a horror movie, it is far from it. Admittedly it starts out that way but soon we descend into action, thriller, drama and end with a bit of comedy.

The church family is a blatant rip-off of the Westboro Baptish Church’s infamous Phelps family, albeit a more aggressive version. Smith even makes reference to the Phelps in the film as if we hadn’t already drawn this conclusion. Members of the Phelps family were invited to the premier where obvious negative comments were made. After a while, Red State feels like Smith’s personal vendetta against the Phelps’ and what he wishes he could do to them.

After the initial horror and suspense we move into a shoot out between the family and the police on the outside of the house and the kids and the family inside. This is where we exhibit the first shift in genre, no longer are we fussed about the survival (or not) of the kids but the ridiculous gun fight which is now taking place in bright sunshine to remove us from the horror section completely. We learn a little about the history between the family and the cops via their marshal, Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) but this information is not given to us easily. Goodman is seen talking on the phone but we only hear his side of the conversation, meaning we have to fill in the blanks.

Arguably, Kevin Smith is one of the best writers of dialogue we’ve seen in the last twenty years, even if most of it is full of expletives and unmentionables, he has only ever, in my eyes, been bettered by one man. Quentin Tarrantino. Smith does his best in Red State, but the only real gritty dialogue we are treated to is the over-long sermon from Abin Cooper. This scene alone wreaks of Tarrantino and I can’t decide if its Smith failing to be himself or if it is the ultimate compliment to QT.

It’s a shame that Smith’s dialogue skills can’t transpire to his writing as for the third time in the film we shift genre once again to the most ridiculous ending to a gun fight I’ve ever seen. We then get told how things went down and it appears the whole film was running up to the “hilarious” irony that will soon be becoming of the Pastor. Not the most satisfying of conclusions ever.

But then this isn’t the most satisfying of films ever. Even as a Kevin Smith fan I have to say he dropped the ball here. Nothing seems to gel together at all and once Smith forgets about the teenagers survival who are we left to care about? The cops who have just shown up on the scene but apparently have some history with the family? Or do our allegiances switch to the Coopers who show their insanity through gun fire?

The Weinstein Company refused to pick up Red State when Smith pitched Zack & Miri to them, he also went on record to say if Michael Parks didn’t sign on he wouldn’t make the movie. Perhaps he should have kept Red State to himself.