Perhaps I wasn’t entirely prepped for Red State, but Kevin Smith referring to this as a horror film threw me off a little bit. It’s really not. Some horrific things happen, but it’s not scary in any fashion that someone may expect out of a horror film. Overall, I’d say it’s an average film. I’ve seen better, and I’ve seen far worse. It held my attention throughout in its blood soaked madness, but I don’t think it’s quite the revolutionary vision or departure that Smith has been plugging. John Goodman is in it, and brilliant actor that he is, he can sell some of the more inept direction and writing. The whole issue here is that everything is unbelievable. There seems little cause or understanding of what’s going on. Smith thinks he can just throw you in the middle of something with no explanation or exploration and say it’s socially conscious because it has vague themes of religious extremism. All of this feels like an excuse for bloodshed instead of thought. Why else would Smith spend a great deal of the running time on a neverending gun battle and bloody close-ups of people getting shot? There’s a scene towards the end of the film where Goodman’s character explains what transpired on the compound, and it’s a great scene. The writing takes an intelligent turn, and Goodman can sell every word of it with the kind of reserved despair we can expect from him. It’s a scene unworthy of a mediocre film like this one, and begs the question “Why couldn’t all of it be that good?!”
