I just got done watching Red State via On Demand for $9.99. I just heard about this movie today and it did sound very interesting, enough so that I did spend 10 bucks on a HD PPV to see it. Right off the bat, I gotta say that it really wasn't what I was expecting and it could have been so much more. Instead it felt very flat. I was also expecting much more from something written by Kevin Smith. For a Hollywood production that cost around 4 million dollars, I have to ask where the money went. I know by Hollywood standards 4 million is pocket change but I've seen plenty of amazing indie horror movies over the years that were made on hardly anything and managed to not only tread new ground in the horror genre but surpass anything on the big screen.
My issue is that as a life long horror fan, this wasn't much of a horror movie, let alone a very good one. It suffers a lot of genre problems, the most common would be not writing decent characters, the entire point of making a good horror movie is to have at least one character for the viewer to like because if you don't care about anyone in the movie then all you're doing is spending 90 minutes just waiting for random people to get killed off. This movie really didn't bother much with characters. It starts with three guys obviously in their early 20's playing teenagers who's entire motivation is having sex with a loose woman. As you'd expect from this kind of movie, it's all a trap set up by the villains of the movie. The villains are religious cult very much based around Fred Phelps and his church of hate, only these people are gun nuts who hoard military grade firearms and take it upon themselves to execute people who they feel God hates. There is one person in the compound that isn't evil but everyone else is evil. The direction of the movie shifts into the local police for a little bit and then the ATF is on the case and they become the focus of the movie. It becomes what you'd expect, they try and do the whole Waco Texas event with the cult standoff. There's a moral gray area in this portion of the movie and it's about the ATF guys being ordered to go in and kill everyone, well they know there are hostages as well as children of the cult inside. The moral gray area just doesn't really hold up as well, again no good characters and no real reason to care if the entire cult gets slaughtered or not.
That's a summary of the whole plot right there without spoiling anything major. There are a lot of things to take issue with in the writing, especially considering how it's Kevin Smith, this guy is normally good at writing entertaining characters. As far as being a horror movie goes, it's barely passable, it's more of a thriller type movie but with weak tension and not enough real drama. The violence was very tame, it's all gunshots and most of them aren't actually shown. That is all you ever see, just a few squibs and one somewhat gruesome gunshot wound. What I was expecting was something closer to the 1965 cult classic Two Thousand Maniacs where these people were totally nuts but they took the killings and made them into their entertainment, really having fun with it. Here it's just wrap them in plastic and shoot them in the head ritualistically. With the ATF element, I think they were going more for the George Romero film The Crazies but it just wasn't working, plus with The Craziest it was more about fearing the trigger men of the government and here it's cold g-men with guns vs a cult with no redeeming qualities. Another better direction this could have taken would be something more humor driven like Machete which actually told a much stronger political message than Red State did. Speaking of the obvious political aspect to the movie, it really doesn't show until very late into the movie and it doesn't even attempt to be subtle, it's just right out in the open. A very flat message that doesn't really mean much in 2011, why not say this when George W. Bush was president? Another point I want to make is that it really could have been much worse. I mean at least they didn't totally beat you over the head with the political message, well they did that but it was just one scene. But I have to say I was relived that it wasn't another one of these torture movies like the first two Saw movies, Hostel, Grotesque, and Martyrs where it's nothing but horribly written one dimensional "characters" getting tortured off camera for the entire movie. That's a trend I was sick of from day one, I mean if a movie made to shock people isn't as gory as 1963's Blood Feast (the original gore movie) then I think they aren't even trying. So maybe the whole gunshot thing isn't so lame because they could have easily went for lots of torture scenes that are 95% off camera. In the end it was a well made Hollywood production that does look good and sound good in HD. It didn't really work as a horror movie, it lacked the emotional spark to be a drama, and it lacked the tension to be a thriller. It's just a well made but very bland movie overall. I'm not saying avoid it at all costs but don't go in expecting too much.
My issue is that as a life long horror fan, this wasn't much of a horror movie, let alone a very good one. It suffers a lot of genre problems, the most common would be not writing decent characters, the entire point of making a good horror movie is to have at least one character for the viewer to like because if you don't care about anyone in the movie then all you're doing is spending 90 minutes just waiting for random people to get killed off. This movie really didn't bother much with characters. It starts with three guys obviously in their early 20's playing teenagers who's entire motivation is having sex with a loose woman. As you'd expect from this kind of movie, it's all a trap set up by the villains of the movie. The villains are religious cult very much based around Fred Phelps and his church of hate, only these people are gun nuts who hoard military grade firearms and take it upon themselves to execute people who they feel God hates. There is one person in the compound that isn't evil but everyone else is evil. The direction of the movie shifts into the local police for a little bit and then the ATF is on the case and they become the focus of the movie. It becomes what you'd expect, they try and do the whole Waco Texas event with the cult standoff. There's a moral gray area in this portion of the movie and it's about the ATF guys being ordered to go in and kill everyone, well they know there are hostages as well as children of the cult inside. The moral gray area just doesn't really hold up as well, again no good characters and no real reason to care if the entire cult gets slaughtered or not.
That's a summary of the whole plot right there without spoiling anything major. There are a lot of things to take issue with in the writing, especially considering how it's Kevin Smith, this guy is normally good at writing entertaining characters. As far as being a horror movie goes, it's barely passable, it's more of a thriller type movie but with weak tension and not enough real drama. The violence was very tame, it's all gunshots and most of them aren't actually shown. That is all you ever see, just a few squibs and one somewhat gruesome gunshot wound. What I was expecting was something closer to the 1965 cult classic Two Thousand Maniacs where these people were totally nuts but they took the killings and made them into their entertainment, really having fun with it. Here it's just wrap them in plastic and shoot them in the head ritualistically. With the ATF element, I think they were going more for the George Romero film The Crazies but it just wasn't working, plus with The Craziest it was more about fearing the trigger men of the government and here it's cold g-men with guns vs a cult with no redeeming qualities. Another better direction this could have taken would be something more humor driven like Machete which actually told a much stronger political message than Red State did. Speaking of the obvious political aspect to the movie, it really doesn't show until very late into the movie and it doesn't even attempt to be subtle, it's just right out in the open. A very flat message that doesn't really mean much in 2011, why not say this when George W. Bush was president? Another point I want to make is that it really could have been much worse. I mean at least they didn't totally beat you over the head with the political message, well they did that but it was just one scene. But I have to say I was relived that it wasn't another one of these torture movies like the first two Saw movies, Hostel, Grotesque, and Martyrs where it's nothing but horribly written one dimensional "characters" getting tortured off camera for the entire movie. That's a trend I was sick of from day one, I mean if a movie made to shock people isn't as gory as 1963's Blood Feast (the original gore movie) then I think they aren't even trying. So maybe the whole gunshot thing isn't so lame because they could have easily went for lots of torture scenes that are 95% off camera. In the end it was a well made Hollywood production that does look good and sound good in HD. It didn't really work as a horror movie, it lacked the emotional spark to be a drama, and it lacked the tension to be a thriller. It's just a well made but very bland movie overall. I'm not saying avoid it at all costs but don't go in expecting too much.
