I'm long past kicking myself for not attending the tour stop here in DC for Kevin Smith's horror film, Red State. I've moved on to just marking each day of my little Iphone calendar until the day of it's national release in October. It'll be On Demand on Labor Day, it's I'd prefer to wait for the theater experience. Although it appears that Smith has done what he intended to do in his self distribution gambit, forgoing the entire studio structure. He's managed to get his fans extremely excited for such a grand change of pace, building up an anticipation that has only marginally slowed down over the last few months. Expect the buzz to reignite over the coming weeks, especially with the release of this new trailer.
Red State follows a group of typical sex crazed teens(Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun, Kyle Gallner) who answer a personal ad from an older woman(Melissa Leo) looking for a good time. When they show up, things don't exactly go as planned. They wind up in the crazed church of a violent right wing preacher(Michael Parks) with a deadly agenda. John Goodman, Kevin Pollak, and Stephen Root co-star.
Everytime I see footage of Red State I'm amazed that this is from the same guy who directed Clerks and Mallrats. It's just so wildly different than anything he's done, dark, gothic, and extremely violent. And then the characters start speaking and it's obvious who wrote it. Not in a bad way, mind you, but I'll be very interested in seeing how Smith's dialogue meshes with a film that's so different in tone than his norm.