Red State

"Anal penetration = eternal damnation"

Kevin Smith tries to reinvent himself with a low budget digi-indie attempt at rural Hitchcock by way of Quentin Tarantino. Shunning the dick and fart jokes that have long been his bread and butter (and trying to distance himself from the stench of his last film, Cop Out), Smith turns his ire onto the Westboro Baptists in this genre-bending horror flick. The result is a cinematic free-for-all that hits all of the director's conservative targets yet sadly feels like one heck of a misfire. Despite the heightened violence it isn't really even a true horror film, Smith breaks so many narrative conventions that it feels dramatically deficient rather than intentionally groundbreaking.

Red State starts out in traditional slasher mode, with three horny teenaged boys travelling into the backwoods of Cooper's Dell one night - lured by the promise of sex with an older woman. This turns out to be a trap laid by an attention-seeking right wing sect of Christians known as the Five Points Church, an abhorent and hateful cluster of bigots who carry out secret executions of sinners during their nighttime masses. Eventually the ATF are attracted to the cult's stronghold when it becomes apparent that a seige is under way, but bureacracy intervenes when the cult is redesignated as a 'domestic terrorist cell' and everything goes FUBAR from here.

This is Smith's tribute to everything that's wrong with America - gun laws, religion, homohobia, bureacratic complications in law enforcement, and governments using fear of terrorism to control the populace. The inclusion of John Goodman's character (and his references to the American Constitution) makes Smith's message pretty clear - he sees America as powerless to stop crazed cults like the Westboro Baptists or the Branch Davidians from existing. All the government can do is wait for tragedies to start and then intervene after the fact. What this says about free speech, I don't quite know. I'm not sure Smith quite knows either... he's opinionated enough to put his thoughts quite clearly on the screen, but he lacks the eloquence to really sell them to anyone who isn't already on his side. Much like Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), Smith's preaching to the converted. I appreciate some of the elements of the script's construction, like the idea that it's a gay man who inadvertantly comes to the rescue of the kidnapped boys, and that it's the fact that this man is in the closet that eventually holds him back, but overall the film just isn't incisive enough.

It's entirely worth watching still, it's just so crazy and out there that it's hard not to see it as a real B-movie gem, and I sense that it will gain some cult appeal in years to come for reasons that Smith probably didn't anticipate. Michael Parks is a big part of this, he's so fantastic and full of charm and twisted love as Pastor Abin Cooper... a siky-voiced monster who's frightening because he believes in what he's doing. John Goodman on the other hand tries his best, but he's looking quite old and worn out, and I'm not sure if this was part of the character or just a case of Goodman getting a bit long in the tooth. The supporting cast is filled with familiar and talented faces, but none of them are really given enough focus to do anything worthwhile with their characters.

Smith has a better eye for editing here than one might expect, no doubt honed from his experience of filming comedy and capturing the rhythm and comic timing of his dialogue. The change of pace that he aims for here is coloured by tension, and whilst the film is certainly quite disturbing at times, the slow build of tension that he aims for doesn't really come off. The film is neutered by odd shifts between subplots, and the unexpected killing-off of one or two major characters (shades of Hitchcock's Psycho probably intended). I think that whilst the film is never predictable it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it just feels too disjointed. This last ditch grab for some critical acclaim just comes off as a failure, and I think Smith knows his time as a filmmaker is now up. I guess we'll have to wait for his alleged last film, Hit Somebody, to see if he's able to truly redeem himself as a director.

TRIVIA: Smith actually made quite a fool of himself after announcing at the Sundance Film Festival that he would be auctioning off the distribution rights to Red State. The idea was lambasted by the media after the film got poor reviews, and Smith changed his mind about the auction (probably after sensing that no one was going to buy his film) and opted to distribute the film himself. Red State subsequently only appeared on the big screen for about a week, at one cinema, courtesy of his mate Quentin Tarantino (who owns said cinema)

DIRECTOR: Kevin Smith
WRITER/SOURCE: Kevin Smith
KEY ACTORS: Michael Parks, Michael Angarano, John Goodman, Kevin Pollak, Melissa Leo, Ralph Garmen, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun, Harley Ramm, Stephen Root, Kevin Alejandro

RELATED TEXTS
- Smith's last attempt to 'reinvent' himself was with the box office bomb Jersey Girl.
- Red State echoes the tradition of other rural-American horror films such as: Backwoods, Cabin Fever, The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Frailty.