Review: Red State

To talk about Red State without bringing up the filmmaker is nearly impossible, because Kevin Smith has gone to great pains to make himself the center of attention in place of his work. From his Sundance stunt in which he publicly excoriated the major studio’s method of distribution – inflating marketing budgets so much that smaller films designed for niche audiences have no shot at profitability – in a room full of distributors and critics, to the announcement that he would be touring with the film and sometimes charging up to $70 a ticket in order to hear him speak before and after the feature, Smith has turned a low-budget, small-scale horror film into more fodder for his cult of personality. Love him or hate him, Smith is a showman and he has succeeded in making Red State seem like an event: something that every film fan should see in order to determine whether it’s an evolutionary leap forward for a one-time critical darling, or another downward step for a filmmaker who has (quite literally) gone to pot.

The film begins with three horny teenagers who answer an ad through a Craigslist-like service for a woman who will have sex with all three of them for money. The gang travels into the backwoods of Cooper’s Dell and meet up with the willing partner in her trailer. Soon enough the boys have been knocked unconscious, coming to in the local Five Points Church, headed by the eerily charismatic Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). Pastor Cooper believes that homosexuality and rampant fornication should be capital crimes and proves his point (after a long-winded sermon) by executing a gay man tied to a cross, intending to do the same to the boys. Meanwhile, ATF Agent Keenan (John Goodman) has been called in to deal with the cult using questionably severe tactics, This leads to a bloody standoff between the ATF agents and the brood occupying Cooper’s compound, all of whom are only too willing to die for their twisted beliefs.

Red State starts off heavy-handedly and remains that way through much of the runtime. Before the plot can begin in earnest, Smith has Travis (Michael Angarano) drive by Cooper’s group of zealots while they’re protesting a soldier’s funeral, wielding such signs as “God Hates America.” The point is obvious; Abin Cooper and the Five Points group are standing in for Fred Phelps and his hateful Westboro Baptist Church. Smith, not trusting us to get the point, then has Travis attend a class in which his teacher delivers gobs of exposition about the church and why they’re both dangerous and protected under the First Amendment. Though the film is a tonal departure from Smith’s previous ribald works, it retains his tendency to just have his characters talk endlessly, constantly telling and telling and then showing and then telling some more. Once the action begins at the church, Parks’ Cooper delivers a sermon that is longer than many actual sermons I’ve attended, layering on the fire and brimstone until one’s eyes start to glaze over. When the ATF arrives the film’s sudden shift into Waco-inspired siege film, though abrupt, momentarily promises to usher in some excitement, but Smith’s clumsy staging of these scenes put an end to that notion.  The film wraps up with even more speechifying, this time couched in a heavy dose of cynicism that comes off more like adolescent sneering than true world-weariness. There are genuine, contentious ideas that Smith is dealing with in this premise, which makes it all the more disappointing that the treatment they receive is so shallow.

Another issue with Red State is the characters. I’m not talking about the performances, which are generally excellent. Parks in particular is wonderful, delivering his hateful religious proclamations with creepy charm and barely-hidden malice. He gives his character depth that isn’t apparent in the other characters. But the rest of the characterizations remain strictly one-note. Goodman gives it his all but his character remains a cipher, a man whose primary story function is to react to everything else and occasionally change his character motivations from scene to scene. The three teenagers who start out as our protagonists are quickly discarded once the action starts, save for a totally unnecessary subplot involving Cooper’s granddaughter that serves only to allow Smith one more “shocking” moment to emphasize the film’s immature nihilism. They barely register, along with Stephen Root and Kevin Pollak in two other poorly defined roles.

There is a moment toward the end of Red State that suggests a story turn so bold that I was ready to overlook the film’s myriad flaws and re-evaluate what Smith was up to all along. Like the other interesting ideas in the film, Smith can’t stick with it, instead wrapping up with a scene that seems conceptually stolen from Burn After Reading. It’s a disappointing end to a film that fails to capitalize on its potential at nearly every turn, taking a volatile premise rife with contemporary significance and turning it into an unengaging action/horror film that constantly backs away from its most interesting ideas. In the end Red State will be more remembered for the circus of hype that its creator spun around it, a triumph for the filmmaker as a brand but a less than promising detour for Smith as an artist.