Red State
Dir: Kevin Smith
2011
****
Red State is a strange one and a hard film to rate, it certainly isn't Dogma 2 - which I was kind of expecting. Kevin Smith has said that what he was trying to achieve with this film was a level of uncomfortableness. He has said that it's like 'Going to sit on a chair and just as you are about to sit, I turn it over and you sit on one of the legs, then I turn it over again and the process continues' - unfortunately, he misses the point that after a while, the fact that you know not to expect a predictable storyline, makes it predictable. Anyway, it is unpredictable, original and interesting. It switches from one genre to the next, which I have to say I found refreshing. Why do films/stories have to stick to one genre? OK, so QT and Rodriguez did it in From Dusk till Dawn long before, as have other directors since but Red State is still pretty individual. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting from a Kevin Smith film. His heart, and more importantly, his head is in the right place. I prefer Lars Von Triers school of thought though, 'A film should be like a stone in your shoe' but I think they are essentially saying the same thing, Kevin Smith is just a little more brash. I like the way they send up Fred Phelps, a character far more frightening than Freddy Kruger or Micheal Myers - Michael Parks's performance is terrifyingly good, he leads a really good cast who are all on top form. The Westboro Baptist Church actually toured with the film and picketed at every screening, you can't buy publicity like that, which was lucky for Smith as it was pretty much a 99.9% independent movie that only made money as it toured the country so he was welcoming any free publicity he could get. I liked Red State, I think the independent film making aspect of it, the genre twisting and the religious and political issues it raises make it very original and interesting, at times it's more 'interesting' than entertaining but credit where it's due, this film deserves recognition. It does depend on your train of thought as to whether you like this film though, middle America scares the hell out of me and it's always easy to see things when your looking from the outside, I get it but will the people it's aimed at?