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Rating: 5/10
Director: Kevin Smith
Writer: Kevin Smith
Cast: Michael Parks, John Goodman, Stephen Root, Ronnie Connell, Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun
With hit movies like "Dogma", "Mallrats", and "Clerks", Kevin Smith has proved to be one of the top film makers of this generation. He has generally positive reviews for his movies and he isn't afraid to push boundaries (I.E. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"). Kevin Smith usually sticks to his heavy-dialogue movies about nothing at all, but it was announced that he was going to try to tackle the Horror genre as well. When Red State was being advertised, there was a lot of positive feedback from it. The trailers looked genuinely scary and gave people a creepy vibe. Then the actual movie came out and it turned out not to be a horror movie at all.
The first 45 minutes of this movie is a solid thriller, but after that turns into a mindless action flick that leads to nowhere. Where did it go wrong you ask? Well, for starters it was labeled as a horror movie, but besides the first 45 minutes there is no horror to be seen. A couple of kids get kidnapped in the beginning and the audience wonders how the hell they are going to escape where they are being held at. That's pretty much the horror aspect of it. Then after that we get this infinite feeling dialogue scene where Michael Parks rambles about how bad people must be punished. It seriously feels like it goes on forever and I was debating to turn off Netflix at that point. That portion of the movie should have been named "Red State" and the rest should have been named "John Goodman Armies a Group of Idiots". During the middle of this flick it becomes a mindless action flick and you wonder why the hell you're watching it to begin with.
Besides John Goodman and Michael Parks, the acting is pretty awful. This movie has a combination of overly acted church fanatics, under-qualified ATF employees, and some horrific and half-assed acting by Stephen Root. It gets more and more annoying as the movie goes on and the whole time I kept watching because I thought something big was going to happen..but nothing ever does. The only thing we get are some CGI-filled deaths that look down right hilarious. There are no good aspects from this movie as a horror movie. Even as an action movie it is really half-assed and cheap looking. I know this is an indie film to the max, but good lord.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. If you do watch it, do yourself a favor and turn it off after the first 45 minutes. Red State suffers from a anticipating beginning, a dreadfully boring middle, and a terrible ending. The story line doesn't go anywhere and it suffers visually from CGI blood and horrible acting. There is a reason why this movie went to Netflix so fast, so stay away!
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Originally Posted by LastSunset
seems we have a mixup of opinions. That's awesome 
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