Red State

Religious fanatics are dangerous, and the US security forces can do pretty much whatever they want after 9/11. How revealing. The runtime felt like six hours, that’s how mind-numbingly bored I was. If someone wasn't giving a half-hour lecture, someone's life was on the line. Unfortunately, I found everyone so "likable" that I just couldn’t care less. The film annoyed me to no end, although Kevin Smith does know how to make a good film. I was going to boo this, but I ended up giving it one star for its original display of automatic weapons. (12/01/2017)

I don’t understand what the hell Kevin Smith is doing. If he kept his promises, he might do better. Everything would be better than a pseudo horror about a bunch of nerds who want to enjoy themselves, so they try to hook up with some grandma online and only find out on the spot that it is in fact a cult. Kevin Smith’s dialogues are alright, but the problem is that the film is neither funny nor as shocking as he’d like. And it’s made even more boring by the fact that everyone from the cult is terribly normal, uninteresting, pretending that everything happening in the film is fine. It’s not. (31/01/2015)

Red State has the misfortune of not having much of a chance to appeal to the only two groups of viewers that would like to watch it. Kevin Smith’s fans like his films mainly because of the humour, not the ideology. Smith's criticism of everything is, as expected, very ubiquitous and the film pulls no punches, but the humour is present only in trace amounts – for instance, when you chuckle at one of the characters and say “what a douchebag”. Horror fans won’t find much, either. But if you’re willing to appreciate the excellent technical aspect, the ingenious structure of the story, the alternation of genres (the most accurate description: a religious-political dramatic thriller with action passages and a pinch of exploitation horror), etc., you will be satisfied. Red State is by no means original or ingenious, but in a time when ideology has almost disappeared from movies, I’m happy to see even a little of it (even though I can’t say I subscribe to the critical message). (13/09/2011)