"Red State" is a terrible mistake. A hysterically ugly attack on Christian fundamentalism which becomes rather fundamental itself in its denial of all things human. During the running time of this movie, no one says or does a single believable thing. They are just stereotypes commenting on stereotypes, with lots of grimy art design and speeded-up camera-work to mask the hollowness. The plot (three teenage boys are entrapped and tortured by a fanatical religious cult) is just an excuse for a paranoid sermons, delivered with a sledgehammer. And the three teenagers are so incompetent when they (briefly) escape and get the upper hand that they lose all sympathy. As all horror movie fans back to the 1950s know (and movie makers have never learned), screaming, helpless people who make no effort to save themselves are not dramatically interesting.
Poor Melissa Leo must have been desperate for a paycheck. John Goodman (photographed cruelly, so that he resembles a bird of prey) is on hand to represent Government Bureaucracy and the Crushing of the Individual Spirit, in a series of speeches that make one feel queasy and embarrassed. There is no appreciable difference between this cinematic abortion and "Saw"-style torture porn, except for the self-congratulatory overlay of moral sanctimony. Except for a few of the violent scenes, this script could have come out of the 1950s.
Poor Melissa Leo must have been desperate for a paycheck. John Goodman (photographed cruelly, so that he resembles a bird of prey) is on hand to represent Government Bureaucracy and the Crushing of the Individual Spirit, in a series of speeches that make one feel queasy and embarrassed. There is no appreciable difference between this cinematic abortion and "Saw"-style torture porn, except for the self-congratulatory overlay of moral sanctimony. Except for a few of the violent scenes, this script could have come out of the 1950s.
