MotM June '12: Red State (2011)

[CT]

Three horny high school students, hoping to get laid, answer an online ad posted by a woman outside of town. Little do they know, it is a set-up masterminded by the charismatic leader (Michael Parks) of a fanatical religious sect. They are now prisoners of a twisted congregation thirsty for the blood of sinners. As they struggle to survive hour to hour, a rogue FBI Agent (John Goodman) does what he can to bring down the overzealous preacher and his misguided followers.

Directed by Kevin Smith

Please rate this film and share your thoughts on it with us!

[The Walking Dude]

I love films that deal with religious fanaticism,so I was really pumped for this one. But it turned out nothing like I expected,and I felt a little down. I gave it a three,cause it didn't suck,I may have to give it a 2nd viewing to truly appreciate it.

[Jen]

I actually really liked it, BECAUSE it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I didn't think Kevin Smith would be any good with this kind of story, but it worked for me. Not perfect by any means, but thought provoking and relevant. I have a hard time seeing it as a horror film though, maybe because I was expecting a totally different kind of movie based on the beginning of the movie.

I'll give it a 3.5.

[HNT]

I give it a 4. I thought it was plenty entertaining and disturbing, though full disclosure, I imagine it doesn't hurt that I'm politically sympathetic with the film. If I weren't, I could see some of the stuff coming off as a bit preachy. I think the ending of the film was an unfortunate mess, so I can't rate it much higher than four. It never bored me, but it never thrilled me either. John Goodman is a fun character in it, though.

[CT]

I guess this was a poor choice on my part. I thought a lot more than just 4 of us would have seen it and wanted to discuss it.

Anyway, I liked it. It was a lot different than I expected as well, but in a good way. I agree with Jen that it's not quite horror. I liked the story, political message, and performances. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Michael Parks' performance which I thought was outstanding. I also thought there was a lot of suspense and tense moments during the captivity of the teens. Agree with HNT that the ending wasn't every strong.

4/5

[Canetoad]

Had to give it a 4.5. Like HNT the political subtext appealed, and I'm a sucker for anything with religious whack-jobs.

And for mine the ending worked beautifully in terms of the whole ''exercise in futility'' theme.

[GL]

Sorry, I'm way late to the party but just came across the fact we had this so time to finally get my thoughts here. I thought it was a heavily flawed and troublesome effort. The first issue to get over at first is the strongly perverted and twisted religious preaching going on, which doesn't make for an easy time to get into this one because it's so far removed from reality that it gets a little too hard to swallow. On top of that, the fact that the group's actions aren't taken up as to be done in a horror film, as hardly anything gets done here that can be called horror as soon as it starts to get chilling, it switches over into an action film with the take-over of the compound. While this is fun stuff with the majority of the stuff comprising of shootouts and stuff, it's a little out-of-tone with the first half and doesn't really fit in with the other half even though that's quite troubled on it's own as this is filled with flawed logic, unrealistic scenarios and a lapse in filling out answers until after the fact, which in turn makes it quite hard to get into. It's got some good stuff here, but this is quite heavily flawed.

[CT]

Glad you gave it a try GL. The tone shift is a bit odd but it didn't really bother me to much. The scariest part about the religious wackos in this movies is that they're based on a real group.

[GL]

Well, I'm not saying it was a bad movie by any stretch, just that as a horror film it's massively flawed because the vast majority of the running time isn't a horror film, and a case could be made that it's not even one at all. The torture of the taped-up prisoner is completely non-horrific in all regards other than the concept of being held captive at the hands of such people, but the fact that they just shoot him in the head instead of doing something interesting with him tells me that being a horror film wasn't even the original intent. Frankly, none of it really feels as such so as a horror film I say it's a massively flawed one.

As a film, though, it's not bad at all. The last forty minutes of the film is a massive shoot-out with bullets flying everywhere, people being shot up and tons of back-and-forth gunfire going on? Sign me up for that, it's right out of my history so I totally support that kind of content in a film, but as this was designed to be a horror film, I can't really give it a lot of positive marks.