3+ might want to skip this one

Honestly cannot believe i am giving a Kevin Smith film this low of a score. I really wanted to like it but i'm sorry, but there just wasn't enough substance to this movie.

The first 15 minutes are a little rocky. The dialogue is Kevin Smith crude (which I guess is not surprising) but extremely wooden. Once the stage is set, the film really takes off. Smith creates antagonists that are realistic & truly scary. There's a sermon scene that goes on too long, but from there the film becomes a mad clusterf**k. In a good way. Smith makes some very bold & divisive choices. Among the chaos is a film that is unexpected & enjoyable, but simultaneously frustrating.

this was one misunderstood and really underrated film along with hard to see in theaters, very low key but one to look for, Kevin Smith did a great job on the film

Kevin Smith appropriately follows up his mediocre mess Cop Out with one of the biggest cop-out endings of recent cinema. The film is a truly miserable cinematic boor from a director who really needs to take his two seats on a Southwest flight and just leave Hollywood for good.

red state starts out with some boring dialogue, moves on to a pretty bad ass shoot out, and then ends with some situations that make you think about the country we live in. The end part is basically what makes you think about this movie and is the most memorable but overall its all just OK.

Its absolutely nuckin futs to realize some people actually believe the kind of shit the preacher preached.

Sometimes it seemed like Smith was trying to push his negative opinions on religion, which didn’t feel quite right even though I agreed with a lot of what he was saying. However, he showed several sides of the issue, mostly effectively. Michael Parks and Melissa Leo gave fantastic performances. It definitely has its flaws and I wouldn’t exactly call it brilliant, but without the silliness of his other films, which often puts me off, I do think, in a lot of ways, it’s Smith’s best film to date.

Kevin Smith is getting less and less interesting. This time, he makes a siege flick that he calls horror. No suspense, no horror, just shooting and preaching. Parks and Goodman are entertaining, but the rest is completely forgettable.

Smith really doesn't know how to do horror. Too much gun use and killing off characters randomly and abruptly can be shocking and effective but it can also leave you without characters to care about and it overuse in this film was never as effective as good old fashioned suspense building. Nice try.

A pleasant surpirse from Smith. Didn't saw it coming.

59.250

Other than a religious theme & caricaturish govt. actions that play out implausibly, there's not a thing that's recognizably Smith here. It'll make u wonder what the hell he was doing before since Smith's never directed w/ this much energy, attention 2 detail, or style. Apparently camera placement does mean a hell of a lot. His casting choices r also perfect as he uses name-actors 2 best effect & the unknowns - Michael Parks as the preacher & esp. Kerry Bishe as Cheyenne - r absolutely riveting.

The problem with Red State is that every single fucking bit of built up tension climaxes in a completely unsatisfying way. It's probably intentional, but it just leaves you pissed off and feeling like shit. The acting is top notch from nearly everyone, but it doesn't save the film. While I agree with most of the hamfisted rhetoric at the end, it's so blatant and obnoxious Smith might as well have just jumped behind the podium himself for the last 10 minutes.

This is clearly a change of pace for director Kevin Smith. The story is interesting and disturbing. Tee cast are very good with performances by Michael Parks, Melissa Leo and John Goodman among others. Hopefully Smith will continue to make different and original films.

What a brilliant unexpected gem of a film. I sat down expecting to be watching a run of the mill torture flick but instead it turns into a different film altogether. Not as a dramatic change to make it a different film entirely but enough to make you go 'oh'. Had me gripped from start to finish and didn't out stay its welcome. My only gripe is that the ending was a bit flat and why is John Goodman not in more films?

It gets a pass off the top because it's K-Smith. That's a matter of my own personal taste. I will, however, re-iterate my complete disdain, as a matter of principle, for teenage dialogue no matter how realistic it might be. Michael Parks' dialogue throughout is absolutely gripping and commands attention. I also absolutely lost it at the "simple just shit itself" line. I think I would have preferred the original ending but this one worked, too. Heavy-handedness topped with classic K-Smith icing.

Totally surprised by the mostly lowish scores here. Do you all just hate Kevin Smith that much? I'm not a huge fan either but credit where credit's due, he churned out a consistently surprising and original story here that kept me on edge throughout. Parks completely knocks it out of the pa...uhhh...Parks is REALLY good. His sermonizing while the sheeted victim is brought out to the altar was bone-chilling awesomeness. Crap ending aside, props to Smith for stepping out of his comfort zone.

So I came up with a nice conspiracy theory. The government only wants us to think we have free speech...mahnnn. Fred Phelps is like some sort of government agent who is, you know, paid to say this stuff so we think we have free speech...MAHNN. Also Kerry Bishe is quite lovely.

this is one of the only horror films i have ever seen that i carnt find any good in & i have seen 1000's of horror films & own well over 1000 on DVD. Because its made by Kevin Smith i am amazed at just how much i HATE this film & i really mean HATE!

Everyone is aware of the leftist beefs with both fundamentalist Christianity and the American law enforcement system. Most viewers are probably already converted. Still, Red State takes both these issues ad absurdum, all at once, and that's probably why its critics regard it as a mess. It's a tense film, but way too political and moralistic for its own good, and it somehow manages to caricature even its main homosexual character, even as it purports to vilify homophobia.

Pretty useless overall. Unfocused, with scenes that take ages to go anywhere and a whole lot of repetition. I would have enjoyed it way more if the trumpets part actually led to, well, the more interesting option. Instead, it just devolves into more talking heads stuff and a snoozer ending. Goodman was pretty cool though.

Overly long scenes, unfitting attempts at humor and some very questionable casting choices make this suffer dramatically. Red State manages to have random deaths that somehow lack any aspect of suspense.

"Haha, fundies are fucked up. Haha, fundies are even more fucked up. Everyone is fucked up. Politics, what the fuck?" This was too bad to be even laughable and it doesn't even have decent political commentary. But I bet the pastor gets raped in jail.

I wouldn't call it a horror movie, strictly speaking, though it has some shocking scenes in it. However, I heard so much about the movie that I'm now somehow a little bit disappointed. It is a really good story with some great potential, but I think there could've been more to it. Nonetheless, Kevin Smith did a really good job in an unfamiliar genre. With every film I love Michael Parks more and more and it's really good to see John Goodman back on the screen again.

Meeee, this is rubbish. Without Kevin Smith's name and fan boys everyone would regard this as a piece of shit. I expected more from him. It look likes he is too lazy to deliver a decent movie. He better sticks to his 'evenings' to tell his superman and giant spider story. At least that is funny shit.

Really, I only watched it for Kyle Gallner, but it turned out to be pretty damn funny!

uneven

Amazing story. Great plot. Never looses ground. Script was amazing. Dialogue was gripping. John Goodman was again shown to be one of the best in the current crop of actors. The first half of build gives wonderfully descriptive backstory for the film. The only complaint I found with this film is it looks like someone cut about 30 minutes out between the surrender and the officer case hearing. Something is missing; and I dropped the score for that single, sole issue in the film. Unforgeable

I've read a lot of complaints about the ending, but I thought it was hilarious. "Patriot Act, bitch".

Kevin Smith has been languishing for a long time; never maturing past the promise he showed in "Clerks." In his attempt at horror, Kevin Smith delivers something much worse, a film that thinks it's much more important than it is. In his condemnation of the Westboro Church (which is not a controversial stance to take), a few things happen, a bunch of characters die, but it never means anything. Also, each character has the horrible tendency to have the voice of Kevin Smith. Absolute garbage.

Any shock value it might have had goes out the window with its infuriatingly bad attempts at humour and social commentary. It's like a 12 year old tried to write and direct a 90s Tarantino movie.

This is Kevin Smith's most serious film to date -- which means he takes his job as a director of actors at least as seriously as he does his very serious ideological pretensions. Goodman is the primary recipient of that relative generosity. Still, this is a political movie made by a perennial adolescent, so much so that it's hard to tell which side the movie's on at any given moment. I wasn't bored much but I was frequently disgusted.

A real shocker that Smith couldn't get distribution for this turd. Pastor gives a great performance, but beyond that, terrible. Half of it is exposition, while the other half is predictable shlock. Check out the alternate ending on Wiki. That would've bumped it up a few notches.

The idea behind the film had potential, yet the horror aspects of the plot weren't fully fleshed out. However, Smith did a great job with the direction. Too bad the plot itself couldn't live up.

It's an uneven film, but it's competently done and has many redeeming merits.

What a fucking tedious turd. Only John Goodman's character is likeable in this fucking garbage. The first half is dull as dirt, the second half is not AS dull as dirt. We watch some guy preach for what felt like an eternity , then we watch the same retards shoot out of windows for another eternity. There's a moment in the end where you think "If it ends like this then this will still be a piece of shit, but it'll be a piece of shit with a not bad ending" then we get that fucking boring ending.

Wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. Pretty fun and full of the typically hilarious Kevin Smith dialogue. That scene with Goodman at the end though, lame as hell. Stupid excuse to give meaning to any of the events that happened here.