Red State

Best known for low-budget comedies like Clerks and Mallrats, writer-director Kevin Smith's Red State is a horror-thriller, focusing on a fanatical Christian fundamentalist group with a sinister agenda. On his way to school in a small Southern town, teenage Travis (Michael Angarno) sees protesters from the Five Points Church demonstrating at the funeral of a gay teenager. Later, his horny buddies (Kyle Gallner, Nicholas Braun) talk him into borrowing his parents' car to go meet Sarah (Melissa Leo), a middle-aged woman from an Internet site for group sex. In a bait-and-switch twist, after the boys arrive at the appointed spot and drink a few beers, they're kidnapped by members of the Five Points congregation, who are ritually—and righteously—killing ‘sinners' under the explicit direction of fire-and-brimstone preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). When the teens' disappearance is reported, a military task force headed by ATF agent Keenan (John Goodman) is dispatched to take Cooper's heavily armed enclave by force. Smith says he was inspired by infamous Pastor Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, plus the 1993 Waco disaster. Although Smith's wry, ironic humor occasionally surfaces here, this is mostly about bloodshed, carnage, and heavy-handed messaging. Optional, at best. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a series of “Red State of the Union” SModcast segments from filmmaker Kevin Smith's weekly series, a “making-of” featurette (49 min.), “The Sundance Speech” post-screening talk by Smith (36 min.), deleted scenes (30 min.), “A Conversation with Michael Parks” with costar Parks and Smith (18 min.), a poster gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an uneven film.] (S. Granger)