Red State Review
By: T.J. “shut the fuck up” Mulligan
Tolerance is a tricky word that is thrown around often and has both negative and positive connotations. In one way, it is good to have tolerance for your fellow man; if you dislike what they do, even to the point of hating them for it, having tolerance allows you to just turn a blind eye and let what will be, be. However, why should people settle for tolerance? Why should anyone have to just ignore what they don’t like when something could (and, maybe in their mind, should) be done about it? The members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the bible-thumping clan who protest the funerals of homosexuals and returning military personnel are intolerant of the people and things they believe to be wrong. In a very small, very crazy little way there is something admirable about the fact that they choose not to simply tolerate what they believe to be damning factors in this world. Despite how others feel about them, these people are constitutionally protected by rights of free speech to say and do what they feel is necessary in their fight against the amoral. However, because of this protection, those who oppose their actions and ways of thinking are forced to simply back away and pay them no mind, to simply “tolerate” them. These issues of tolerance and free speech in the face of what both sides consider atrocities is the central theme behind Kevin Smith’s latest film Red State.
Red State follows Travis (Michael Angarano), Jarod (Kyle Gallner) and Billy-Ray (Nicholas Braun) three seemingly typical horny teenagers living in a small town in middle America. However, also in their small town reside the Coopers, an overtly religious family-clan headed by the patriarch, Pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). The Coopers are infamous throughout the town, known to picket and demean whatever they find to be amoral and against their idea of God’s word. One night the three boys decide to answer an add they saw for sex on a Craigslist-type website, which leads them up into Cooper’s Dell, the name of the compound in which the Coopers live. Once there they meet their supposed sex partner, Sara (Melissa Leo). The four have a few beers but as the boys head to the bedroom to undress, they get dizzy and pass out, having obviously been drugged. When they awake, they find themselves in the middle of a world they can’t believe - where religious zealotry and ideology are taken a couple steps too far.
Joshua and I saw this movie during the Springfield, OH stop of the Red State U.S.A. tour, featuring Q&A from director Kevin Smith afterward. Touching on that first I feel it’s pertinent to say that, if you find that he is going to be performing live in any sort of fashion close to your vicinity, it is well worth your time and money to go see Smith speak. That man oozes charm and brings the funny as well as the insightful. Even if he tells a story he’s told a hundred times, he does so with a flare and enthusiasm that makes you believe it’s the first. All in all, it was a really fun night…
But it wasn’t because of the movie.
This is Smith’s first foray into horror and you can tell that he is just not used to it. Don’t get me wrong, the first Act of the movie gets you pretty hooked, wondering just where this whole wild ride is going to take you. This is followed up by an equally strong second Act, where Michael Parks knocks it out of the park (pun intended) with his haunting performance as the gravelly-voiced and psychotic preacher. Then the third Act happens. It’s at this point that I advise anyone who decides to go see this movie to maybe brings ear plugs because shit just gets loud. Instead of continuing with the creepy, mysterious vibe that the arch villainous Abin Cooper has laid out before us the movie switches into a bad action movie spliced with scenes from a bad horror movie. The tense feeling brought about by watching this disturbing family for the first part of the movie is replaced by a different sort of tense feeling from the loud noises coming from the speakers, killing the mood of the film flat.
It’s a shame this couldn’t have been a better movie because, as mentioned above, Parks was “on” the whole time. He delivered an Oscar-level performance in this that, because of the last part of the film, will never get recognized. Really all of the talent in this film put on very game performances (with the exception of John Goodman from time to time) that will undoubtedly get lost in the drudgery that is the film itself.
I really wanted to like this movie. I liked the premise, the concept of showing it out on the road in a traveling show, and I love me some Kevin Smith, but Red State is proof positive that if a movie has a bad third Act, it can ruin the film as a whole.
I give Red State 2 chilling Michael Parks performances out of 5.
