Whipped into the public eye via a storm of anti-critic hostility; snake-oil salesman marketing tactics and rampant ego-felating retweets from his legion of hardcore fans, the furore around Kevin Smith’s Red State seems to be ignoring a key question: is it actually any good?
The short answer is no, it’s not. Essentially a horror-tinged swipe at Fred Phelps and his posse of Westboro Baptist Church fuckwits, Red State lacks several vital elements that would have helped it succeed as either a satire or a straight-up fright flick. After an opening that could well be hoisted straight from a DTV American Pie sequel (three horny teens setting out to nail an older prostitute), the film changes track and turns into a Southern Gothic horror as Phelps-a-like Michael Parks summarily preaches his hateful wrath whilst routinely executing sinners before his congregation. Yet before it settles into this unsavoury groove, the film again morphs into a siege drama, with John Goodman’s ATF agent trying to regain control as the body count at the Five Points church escalates around him.
It doesn’t help that there’s no discernable protagonist here. Our teen leads are thoroughly dislikeable from the offset, so their plight feels of little consequence. Melissa Leo – best known at this point for dropping an f-bomb all over the delicate ears of the AMPAS – doesn’t really deliver anything of note; to the extent that at one point I had to double check they weren’t just using out-takes of Marcia Gay Harden’s character from The Mist. Goodman tries hard, but his character isn’t provided with enough shading to make his conflicted emotions worth caring about. Late in the film Smith tries to establish a teenage member of Parks’ family as a pseudo-heroine. Had we been following her turmoil as a member of the church from the offset it might have paid off – instead, her motivations seem knee-jerk and improbable.
This leaves us with Parks, who quickly establishes himself as the best thing in the movie. Tarantino fans already know that Parks can chew up a scene and spit it out with deadly accuracy, but here he’s given the chance to snarl dialogue front-and-centre for the majority of the film. He acts with the demeanour of a grandfather who’d just as soon beat you to death with his shoe as share his bag of Werthers Originals. He's equally on top form regardless of whether he's sat quietly tinkling at the piano as chaos breaks out around him, or spilling bilious hate from his pulpit.
Smith’s departure from his weary brand of stoner comedy should at least be commended, although after six movies featuring Jay and Silent Bob, it all feels like a case of too little, too late. He can’t resist shoving some humour into the mix – mostly from a pointless Kevin Pollak cameo which requires him to even follow a punch line with a “zing”, like the audience were unsure there was a joke – but the satirising of Phelps (who gets a name check) or any number of his nut bag equivalents seems disappointingly toothless. Previously known for his flat directorial style, at least here the camera pings and zips around with some urgency – this may be the first instance of a Smith movie where his direction actually improves a script rather than diminishes it. A greater effort to focus his story and give the audience something to care about would have worked wonders, but as it stands, Red State is a misshapen, confused tangent with no discernable voice and little to recommend, save for a knockout Michael Parks performance.
Red State is available now to anyone with a US iTunes account; it opens in UK cinemas on Sept 30th.
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