Red State

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

Bit of a change up for Kevin Smith and a welcome one too. It's a film that I think overall had more good bits than bad. The set up is pretty standard, but where it goes from there is a little different from your average horror film fare. In fact classifying this as just a horror film would be misleading. It still has traces of his trademark humour throughout and I might consider it a very dark comedy if I didn't find the themes just a little too tragic. It's almost the same message as Dogma but delivered in a much grittier way.

The pace is all over the shop. Michael Parks' introduction is basically a 15 minute monologue. It's quite something and I actually didn't mind that. But despite there not being much fat, running at a brief 88 minutes, there are long sections that seem to hinder any kind of build up to the climax. Especially when it just turns into a stand off, an extended gun fight.

That climax is something I have mixed feelings about. I'll have to ponder it more. Once an extreme idea has been dropped in you lap in the final moments like that, there's a part of me that wishes it wasn't there and there's an even greater part of me that wishes they didn't chicken out and just went full on with the concept. As it is, it makes for an amusing and pointed ending and it definitely works but the pay off doesn't seem great enough for throwing the audience like that.

The cast he's assembled is quite impressive and a few horror film conventions he sets up are gleefully thrown out the window. There are a few areas where you can really notice the rolling shutter issues on the Red camera, but on the whole it looks pretty good. Overall there is far more of the film that I liked than didn't.