Sundance Film Festival 2011: Red State

Are you with Kevin Smith or against him? This question was played out literally in front of the Eccles Theatre last night, when members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church – you know, the sensitive family that pickets funerals of killed-in-action gay soldiers while wielding placards that say “GOD HATES FAGS” – occupied a section of the car park to protest against his new film Red State, which, as far as they knew, skewers the WBC phenomenon. As I approached the cinema, part of me wondered how they knew to be there, since Smith had so far been circumspect about the content of the film, which only began shooting in September of last year. But another part of me wondered whether Smith had more to fear from his own fans. Using social media as his lightsabre, Smith has fought a hard battle to make Red State THE film of the festival, and as much as the WBC were likely to give the film traction in publicity terms, his followers were just as likely to kill it.

Fast-forward a few hours and many of the first reviews put the boot in. They said the film was messy, incoherent, and failed to deliver the elements Smith promised in his fantastically passionate introduction (he said firmly that the film was not a comedy – like Dogma – but a straight, downhome horror – like Jersey Girl). Now, there is quite a lot of irony here. One of the things to like about Red State is that it IS messy. Not always in a good way, but this is a film that constantly surprises. The phrase “bait and switch” has been used, but I don't think it's that calculated. Red State is an urgent, undisciplined scream of a movie, and what I find astonishing is the way his critics seem to have a problem with that. What do they expect a $4m film, made and delivered in five months, to look like? The fanboy websites don't seem to realise just how far they and Smith have grown apart. They accuse Smith of being a dishonest, disloyal huckster, unaware that is they who have slipped into the major studios' pockets. I don't agree with everything Smith said last night, but I do agree with his assertion that independent cinema has been co-opted by the mainstream, and the people who are shooting down his film are, unwittingly, doing the studios' job for them.

So what is Red State? It's a majorly confused beast, certainly. The beginning I found really powerful: three high-school boys from a sleepy city go trawling the internet and find a woman in a nearby town who promises them a no-holes-barred foursome. This is the first 20 or minutes of the movie, and it's a fantastic horror movie set-up. While the boys are in class, we learn about the Five-Points Baptist Church, a fanatical religious sect – much like the WBC – who have been picketing the funeral of a local gay man killed in a recent hate-crime murder. The boys don't care much about this; they're busy making plans to meet the MILF they've met online. But to reveal what happens next would be unfair, since Red State mostly works in terms of the unexpected. It doesn't have a conventional narrative, or structure, or even genre, and while this can often be frustrating – its multiple viewpoints are especially confusing during the gory, bullet-strewn action sequences – it's also good to see in these days of safe, made-by-committee studio franchise movies.

One criticism levelled at the film is that it's too talky, and this is fair enough. A very early and key horror sequence with the electric Michael Parks as fundamentalist pastor Albin Cooper loses its power for that very reason, and another – featuring John Goodman as a G-Man brought in to deal with the Five Pointers – simply drowns in exposition. But, although I was as uncomfortable as anyone with this, it was fascinating to see Smith try to put his undeniable writing skills to a different end. Likewise, the film has been slammed for its genre promiscuity, and while this was certainly confusing in the middle patch, again, it was interesting to see Smith working outside his usual point-and-shoot comfort zone. Indeed, it was good to see that he can direct without being arch, and while comedy can't help but creep in, this isn't a film that takes itself lightly.

In many ways. Red State is a true hot-button film of 2011, since it asks pertinent, if sometimes clumsily phrased questions about free speech and government power. On the one hand it defends the likes of the WBC and their First Amendment rights, but on the other, it asks how much we should ignore them. The true horror of Red State is not that it's some Halloween slasher thing but that it deals with the very real spectre of armed ignorance, as evidenced in the recent shootings in Tucson. In fact, I was mostly disappointed last night that Smith used so much of his podium speech last night to talk in circles about his plans to self-distribute the film: I wanted to know how he sees America going these days, because it's clear from the film that it's a situation he's still talking over in his head, and that's what I responded to most. Put it this way, if Red State had appeared, unheralded, from an unknown filmmaker, it would have been hailed as a flawed but promising new work from a director who would certainly one day refine all its elements.

The fact that it's Kevin Smith, and he's only made this frank and committed statement now, after 17 years in the business, will count against him. He claimed last night that he was done with directing and that his next film – Hit Somebody, featuring the same key cast – will be his last. If it is, it will be a shame, since Red State suggests that a proper, serious, affecting movie is not beyond his grasp, and that's really quite something for a director so long in the tooth. The lament of fanboys these days is that their heroes don't deliver any more – think John Carpenter and George Romero – so, for all its flaws, Red State should be a cause for celebration, not (no pun intended) crucifixion.