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Critics Consensus: Red State is an audacious and brash affair that ultimately fails to provide competent scares or thrills.
Critic Consensus: Red State is an audacious and brash affair that ultimately fails to provide competent scares or thrills.
All Critics (90) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (55) | Rotten (35) | DVD (2)
Calculated to outrage and executed to underwhelm, Kevin Smith's Red State is like a dull blade slashing wildly, predictably and ineffectually at its target.
It's a charming if conspicuously unfinished film, a half-riotous, half-idiotic send-up of the teen horror genre with a vaguely hip political twist.
This is Smith's best film for a while.
If nothing else, it's nice to see this director refusing to play by the rules of the multiplex.
Wants so badly to push viewers' buttons, but struggles to reach them more often than not.
For all its boisterous profanity and splattery violence, the film is more of a weary sigh than a sputtering volley of indignation.
Once inside the compound, "Red State" starts to take shape as it settles into the rhythm of a siege thriller
Red State's second half is a gripping and relentless 70s-inflected exploitation B-movie, giving us exciting ultraviolence alongside intriguing debates -- one admires the ambition.
The writer/director known for being a premiere comedy auteur has made a gritty horror/thriller satire that defies convention.
Smith has proven he can create a dark, intense film that is riveting and raw, and unabashed in its examination of the serious threat of the religious right in America.
Phenomenal
Smith's greatest failure with Red State is that he will provide Fred Phelps with an even bigger ego to go along with the boosted Google alerts he is bound to receive.
Kevin Smith's shot at a "serious" movie is this infuriating, terribly directed and unfocused mess that only manages to be morally disgusting in its childish, inconsistent political ideas while also full of implausible situations and long, unnecessary monologues.
Super Reviewer
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So close to how I see Westboro Baptist Church and their craziness!
Three high school boys go off in search of internet sex and find themselves kidnapped by a heavily armed religious cult. Kevin Smith's first attempt at a "grown up" film, Red State is an offbeat thriller with horror overtones that continually tries and occasionally succeeds at confounding your expectations. It begins as a Porky's style road movie, veers into torture porn territory only to become a siege thriller. Smith's willingness to dispose of key characters on a whim always keeps you guessing, but it also means that you never really connect with any of them and his dialogue is a little too pleased with itself in places, turning into ranting monologues rather than genuine discourse. The plot is also rather too far fetched to be taken seriously as drama and it's not OTT enough to be considered exploitation, but it is off-beat and unusual enough to always entertain thanks to watchable performances from John Goodman and Michael Parks. Despite its faults, this is probably Smith's best effort to date.
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