Red State

2011 shoot-'em-upper

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Some dumb kids use the Internet to find a cougar willing to have sex with, but they end up abducted by a religious cult with a leader who wants to kill them because they're homosexuals.

I stopped following Kevin Smith on Twitter after watching this movie. Said to myself, "I just can't follow somebody who made this movie on Twitter." Yeah, I've seen worse movies, but this one seems to have an agenda which makes it even worse. This is a movie that thinks it's more intelligent than it is when the truth is that Kevin Smith really isn't a very good director and doesn't have much of a story to tell here anyway. You put your characters in a mildly horrifying situation (note: This isn't really a horror movie as promised on the poster up there. It's definitely more of an actioner.), go nowhere with it, and then have a scene where everybody is shooting at each other that takes up about half the movie. The biggest problem is that you don't really care about any of the characters. This is a movie that doesn't really have a good guy. It's bad vs. bad, and unless everybody gets it in the end, you're not going to be satisfied. Speaking of the ending, how ridiculous does this thing end? The cutesy little trick that Kevin Smith pulls here should cause him embarrassment. The lone good thing about this movie? The performance of the versatile Michael Parks as the preacher man. In the hands of another director, this character and performance could have been something. In Kevin Smith's hands? Not so much. Kevin Smith, you just lost yourself a Twitter follower. And I'm a guy who follows Neil Hamburger!