I saw this in Chicago last night. I posted this elsewhere:

I was quite surprised by how much I liked Red State. I didn't really know what to expect after the abortion that was Cop Out, but it was a solid movie. The first 10 minutes seemed a bit awkward (plus the sound dropped out twice for about 10 seconds - not too important in a movie written by a guy heavy on dialogue )but after that it was quite a ride (albeit a short one - it was 87 minutes including about 5 in credits).

Acting seemed very good all around. John Goodman was fantastic. Michael Parks was great, but a bit of his dialogue was hard to understand due to an accent and the way he was preaching. Melissa Leo really creeped the hell out of me.

Actually the movie overall was pretty damn creepy. He calls it a horror but that doesn't seem to fit it too well. Thriller seems a better description.

A few moments surprised the hell out of me - took turns I wasn't expecting at all. A bit of humor sprinkled in here and there, but not much. Decent visuals and the sound production was damn good. Very surprising that it was made for only $4M. Doesn't have a Kevin Smith feel to it much at all, either - except in the final scenes.

It's not going to win any awards and I don't know how he plans on word of mouth and a $0 marketing budget to propel a movie when the release date is still 7 months away, but it'll make it's money back. It's better than a whole lot of shit that passes for movies nowadays, that's for sure.

The Q&A was ok. Too many film students asking questions (which of course required 20 minutes for Kevin to answer each one) and not enough talk about this movie. But it was a cool experience and I'm glad I went.

"It's gonna get grown-uppy in here"

It is ok to agree with that right???

Umm... I don't care what film it is. He/she commented that they always vote zero. I asked why etc... could have been any movie thread.

DVDTalk always struck me as one of the more mature movie forums (comparatively speaking, there are surprisingly few "SO CRAP! I HATE THIS CRAP!" posts), you have to let the few that aren't run around or it causes an imbalance.

I'll second that. While it can get a bit immature at times, it's nothing compared to the discussions at IMDB where name calling and personal attacks are part of the norm and tolerated.

Saw this Monday night in Seattle. I would have posted earlier, but I'm on vacation and it slipped my mind.

I give it 4 stars.

I didn't know what to expect from this movie. I went to it mainly for Kevin Smith and I happened to work it into my vacation plans for this week.

Only two small things I would change about it:

There's a brief flashback scene that's completely unnecessary.
There's also another point where cut to a screen shot of the time of day which just made things even more confusing to me (would go into more detail, but might get a bit spoilerly).

Other than that, it was a great movie and was really impressed with Smiths work on it.

I saw the movie at Smith's Q&A and I have a few concerns

[spoiler/]When the kids take the mom's car out and are gone all night why don't the parent notify the police when they aren't back by a certain time? Realistically when i was a kid and had my mom's car and wasn't back she's be calling me to find out where i was.

Secondly I hated the FBI characters at the end. For such a dark subject manner them talking about coke can cocks and other juvenile things made no sense at all. [spoiler]

Please before you get killed learn to use the correct spoiler tags.

um, you might want to fix those spoiler tags.

those are the most minor of spoilers that he could give out. Really nothing.

Bump.

Red State will be on VOD starting today, for those unable to see it thus far.

Nice. This and Melancholia = VOD finally interests me.

I went to one of the screenings at QT's theater, where Smith was doing Q&A after. A quick and intense 90 mins. Michael Parks def deserves on Oscar nom for his performance. John Goodman is great as welll. Smith said a buddy of his was doing a doc and had a small piece on Fred Phelps, and that's what inspired him to write this movie, while waiting for Seth Rogen to say yes on doing Zack & Miri.

Can Smith ever make a movie where his characters are not obsessed with sex or sexual dialogue? For a movie with such a dark subject matter, he really piled on the sex talk.

So I just watched the movie, and let me preface it by saying that I am a fan of most of Kevin Smith's work, but can agree that he is an attention whore who has an ego. But none of that really matters to me as I enjoy his films (except Cop Out) and a podcast of his (Hollywood Babble On).

I liked Red State, it had some great performances, had a great pace and flew by. It is definitely not a horror movie, straight up action-thriller. Was kind of surprised by some of the violence since that was unusual for a Smith film, but he was trying something different and I think he succeeded. I also agree that this certainly wasn't an attack on Christians, but on an extreme sect of religious fanatics.



The performances by Goodman, Leo, the three teen guys and Kerry Bishe were great, but Michael Parks was phenomenal. Awesome to see him as the star here. I didn't know the movie would be so short, or that the two halves would feel so different. Overall I liked it.

***/****

forgot to mention this in the other thread, but kind of threw me off that the movie

He had planned to, but abandoned the idea.

I gave this zero stars after I saw the flick.

Caught this off Amazon on VOD. Which is great, btw. $10 bucks and I don't have to deal with a babysitter, driving to the theater, and paying more than twice as much in ticket prices. I just did that with Tucker and Dale vs. Evil too and it was also great.

Loved it. Quick, dirty, intense but satisfying. A real step up for him.

I don't know why anyone is describing it as a horror movie. It most definitely is not that. More of an action film if anything. I really liked that no one was really safe throughout. More than one surprising moments. And there were a whole lot of random "hey, that guy!" actors in the movie that my wife and I enjoyed.

Overall I gave it 4 stars. I was honestly a bit surprised I liked it as well as I did but it had a great edge to it and the action was handled really well. Just a very well-done project.

Just saw it on PPV. I have to say that Michael Parks was superb and I hope someone has enough courtesy to give him some kind of a push during awards season. I don't think he'll win anything, but he was damn fine.

That said, the rest of the movie was kind of "meh." It had some thought provoking moments, but you could tell Smith was outside of his comfort zone. He should have just done the script and left the rest in the hands of another director. I honestly didn't care about the characters aside from the Parks' , and that was because the actor made him so interesting. I gave it three stars on that alone. Just not much to write home about I'm afraid.

3.5/5 It started off pretty fantastic, but I didn't really like the turn it took (although it was still good, I preferred the first half much more).

I had no intentions of watching this, but then a review DVD copy wound up in my mailbox and I had no choice. I'm a fan of Smith's earier work, but with the exception of Clerks II I haven't liked anything of his since Dogma.

I loved this. I'd argue it's his best film as a director because he's finally exhibiting signs of growth. And not just physically, for once. The writing was sharp, the tone was unsettlingly dark & grim, all the actors were excellent and the film goes in directions you don't expect it to.

And the final line was hilarious.

Even though I got a free DVD, I'm actually going to buy a BD copy (once it hits $10) - that's how much I enjoyed it.

I wasn't too impressed with it. It started off well and the ending was both poignant and satisfying... but the middle dragged....

Netflix just added this to streaming:

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Red_State/70170045

Hardly seems like a milestone to skip theaters and go straight to Netflix, but whatever Kev, I'll watch your flick for free. Psst...you could have had at least $10+ from me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.