Review #1,348: 'Red State' (2011)

By 2010, even die-hard followers of writer/director Kevin Smith were starting to think he'd lost the plot. After a string of flops and outright disasters that included the likes of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jersey Girl and Cop Out (although Zack and Miri Make a Porno was pretty good), it looked as though the comic-book enthusiast was half-arsing it, and was never going to reach the dizzy heights of his earlier output like Clerks and Chasing Amy. It was perplexing, as anybody who has ever heard his podcasts or any of his impassioned Q&A sessions will know Smith as a highly intelligent and articulate guy with a real knowledge of his craft. But he hit back at his doubters in 2011 with Red State, a horror/thriller with a stellar cast and a real buzz surrounding it (generated by Smith's self-promotion). The result was still divisive among critics and audiences, but it managed to win back the faith of those who felt that Smith was one of the defining directors of the 1990s, as well as winning some new fans in the process.

The horror in Red State comes from fire-and-brimstone preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), the leader of the Five Points Trinity Church, a sort of Westboro Baptist Church-style hate mob who picket the funerals of homosexuals. Meanwhile, a group of horny high-school boys arrange a date with a prostitute online, who will only agree to the hook-up if she can sleep with all three of them at the same time. Desperate to get their end away, they turn up at the trailer of Sarah Cooper (Melissa Leo), the bat-shit crazy daughter of Abin. They are drugged and taken away, waking up inside the Five Points Church just in time to witness the murder of a young gay man. He is bound to a cross in clingfilm while Abin spews hate speech, before being shot in the head and tossed down a trapdoor. It looks like we're in familiar territory as the boys try desperately to escape before they themselves are displayed in front of the wide-eyed congregation.

Only Red State takes a sudden tonal shift around the half-way mark, moving the action away from the captives and towards the efforts of ATF agent Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) - who is alerted to the Church's activities when a local deputy is shot dead - to diffuse a potentially catastrophic gun-fight akin to Waco. There are plenty of extremely interesting ideas Smith wants to explore here, but unlike his brilliant and elegant talks, he tackles them with a messy combination of violence and chaos. It's clear he's simply fed up with religious hypocrisy and the country's failure to tackle the problem, and you can certainly feel the anger, but you get the sense that the point could have been made with more care and restraint. In fact, the only sign of restraint he shows is at the climax, which is precisely the time he should have gone for broke. Still, Red State is enjoyable for what it is, and delivers a fair amount of surprises. Parks, who sadly passed last year, gives the performance of his career, truly relishing the chance to embrace his inner monster. Smith hasn't really kicked on from here, choosing instead to dabbled in television projects, but at least we know the Fatman still has it in him.


Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Michael Parks, Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Michael Angarano, Kerry Bishé, Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollak
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie