Set in Middle America, a group of teens receive an online invitation for sex, though they soon encounter fundamentalists with a much more sinister agenda.
While his ambition is admirable, Smith’s characters – with the notable exception of Keenan – are unsympathetic caricatures, and feel too much like convenient mouthpieces for the issues he wants to tackle. An inspired and bizarre final twist almost works, until Smith pulls the rug and backtracks for a West Wing-lite philosophising conclusion.
A brave attempt from Smith to break away from dialogue-heavy comedy, Red State doesn’t lack for ideas. What it does lack is an ability to execute them sharply.
It’s ever so cynical and pleased with itself.
Please don’t quit, Kev. We’ve forgiven you for Jersey Girl. Honest.
Some lugubrious preaching aside, this is taut, unpredictable and eerie, with good performances, including from John Goodman as an exasperated FBI agent.
The ending itself, so promisingly hallucinatory, was in my view a bit fudged. But this is Smith's best film for a while.
Too many complications as a backswoods horror turns into a political diatribe.
A noble failure.
Funnily enough, it's his most watchable movie in years.
It all adds up to a slick, pleasingly strange, politically savvy genre mash-up that Smith tops off with a quite unexpected and extraordinary finale. Great stuff.
Red State isn't just [Smith's] best film, but the first of his films that should have been longer.
It becomes crude, equal-opportunity comedy when Goodman gets away with it.
While the film features a number of strong performances from Parks, Goodman, Gallner, Braun and Angarano, Smith’s long-awaited film and its message of Christian extremism in the US gathering power, followers and automatic weapons is sadly eclipsed by the movie’s premature and infuriating conclusion.
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General release. Check local listings for show times.
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