Red State

The Kevin Smith film that made big news at Sundance when he announced that he would be distributing it himself without a studio. That alone can get a movie lover interested in seeing what this movie is all about.

I honestly had no idea what the plot was when starting this movie, Netflix had placed it in the horror genre and the poster portrays and women holding a gun. Doesn't sound too horrible, right?

Nope, it was pretty horrible. The film basically just proved that religion as well as the government are just completely fucked up. Oh and so is the internet. Nothing I don't already know given the fact that I live in America and pay attention to the news, and let's not forget lived thru the Bush era.

This movie suffered for too many plots and jumping from one to the other. Sometimes this can work very well, like when a movie starts out following a character the audience expects to be the main important one but then he/she gets killed and we realize this is a movie about someone else completely, see Hitchcock's Psycho. However Kevin Smith is no Hitchcock, not even close. The audience doesn't care enough about any of the characters, they are static and frankly annoying. After about 20 minutes of the Preacher speaking, I wanted him to be shot and killed. He could be called the main character of this film frankly because he occupied the majority of it. A man who was completely crazy and unlikable, now that's just bad writing.

The focus jumps from teenagers to the religious group to the government, this could have worked but it felt forced and random. Basically, this movie was a waste of time and I understand why Smith decided to purchase it himself, after seeing this film who would have wanted to buy it?

Billed as a horror film that was only scary because of how horrible it was. Not in the good bad way either, just bad. I'm sure Smith tried to make it feel like a satire of religion and the government but the institutions felt too real for it to be a satire, but the film wasn't clever enough for that realness to make it fit into horror.

** and 1/3 stars from me. Bad movie, I wouldn't watch it again but I can tell what Smith was going for but I'll say what we're all thinking. Smith, get a time machine and go back to the 90s to when you were making good films and stay there.