Hola all. Massawyrm here.
As has been written numerous times, RED STATE isn’t exactly a horror film, though Kevin Smith certainly thinks it is, having argued rather strongly that the ideas he plays around with in it are truly frightening. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that, structurally speaking, it simply isn’t one. What he’s made is satire. Pure, straight from the bottle satire. Far too often people mistake parody for satire and they forget that films like this certainly qualify. RED STATE is Smith’s manifesto on what is wrong with this country, laying bare his fears of what religious and political extremism mean for the future of our society. It is not a nice film nor are its ideas very pretty, but it isn’t horror.
What it happens to be is good. Very good.
I certainly understand the confusion. The opening act is almost identical to that of HOSTEL, in which a group of teenage boys take a trip to a remote location to score some cheap ass on the sly. What they find instead is a nightmare that begins to take us into all too familiar torture porn territory before swerving wildly and becoming something else entirely. What it becomes is incredibly interesting, a maddening look at old school, fire and brimstone fundamentalism, tempered with far right wing extremism and set loose to prepare for the apocalypse.
What makes this such effective satire is a combination of Smith’s writing and Michael Parks’ brilliant performance as fiery preacher Abin Cooper. Smith doesn’t go ridiculously over the top here; instead he crafts a recognizable ideology out of Old Testament scripture eerie in its execution. The Bible is quite clear about how to deal with sinners – that is if you pretty much ignore entire swaths of what Jesus later preached – and Cooper’s offshoot brand of “Christianity” is not as much about God loving as it is about God fearing. And Smith is allowed to make a strong point through that. There is nothing that Cooper does that is particularly contradictory with an Old Testament perspective on the church. It is an ideology so coherent that it actually makes more sense than the preaching of Fred Phelps that Smith initially set about to satirize.
Parks tears it up as Cooper, giving an Oscar caliber performance that well exceeds that of his beloved dual roles in KILL BILL. This is no mere parody of Phelps; Parks immerses himself in the waters of zealotry and never emerges to so much as make a joke. He is incredible, absolutely spot on to the point that you can easily understand not only how his congregation could be taken in by it, but how others might fall into it as well. And I see how Smith might mistake the scariness of that as horror. But it isn’t.
RED STATE neither looks nor feels like anything Smith has ever made before, which of course I mean in the best way possible. Everything about this technically is heads and shoulders above everything else he’s ever done. The cinematography truly captures the look and feel he’s aiming for; the acting is several notches above every performance he’s ever gotten out of an actor; and there isn’t a single moment of anything resembling Smith-speak in the entirety of the film. It is every bit a film separate from his filmography as MATCHPOINT was to Woody Allen’s. Were you to remove Smith’s name from the credits, no one would remotely fathom this was one of his films. It is a lightspeed jump as an artist that shows - despite his recent antics –a newfound maturity as a filmmaker, proving him to be somebody with something to say and the talent to say it without having to always be in frame when it is said.
I by no means find the film to be perfect, but Smith has acknowledged that he wants to trim 5-10 minutes that he assured us we wouldn’t miss – mostly air in scenes and a few lines that didn’t play as well as he hoped. Personally, I’m pulling for him to cut most of Kevin Pollack’s jokes, as they were the one thing that fell a little flat. Pollack isn’t terrible, but his sarcastic demeanor fails to break the tension and only serves to irritate the audience slightly during what are otherwise good scenes. Fortunately, none of his scenes hinge upon the gags and he is always opposite John Goodman who is giving the level of performance you’d expect out of one of his Coen Brothers roles (which is to say that it is pretty damn inspired.) Something tells me that lightening the film’s time up a bit will only make it better, as long as he leaves pretty much everything involving Parks and Melissa Leo intact.
The film is a divisive one. There really aren’t any good guys here, no real protagonists to ride it out with. Smith’s purpose is to set up a very fucked up situation only to turn human nature loose to make it worse, while he crafts an intriguing series of twists and turns that continually manages to surprise time and again. I certainly understand why Smith decided to release this by himself – financial matters aside, this is exactly the type of a film a distributor would pick up on the director’s reputation alone, only to later second guess their choice, unceremoniously dumping it on DVD in order to avoid public criticism from outspoken groups that might resemble any one of the film’s targets. This way, Smith takes the full brunt of any backlash, fully prepared to defend his own vision without having to worry about making the studio look good at the same time.
So, the question most of you are probably asking is: is this worth $65 a ticket? If you have to even ask that question, then the answer is no. Smith is taking this around early for the superfans who line up and pay $65 to hear him speak for several hours; this is just like that, but with a movie attached. If that sounds ridiculous, the film will be released in a number of theater chains come October – see it then. It’ll be worth seeking out.
Until next time friends, Massawyrm
