Editorials
Kevin Smith’s First Horror Movie ‘Red State’ is Even More Terrifyingly Relevant 10 Years Later
From Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later to Scorsese’s Shutter Island, some of the most entertaining genre films are made by established directors attempting to challenge themselves by trying something new. Mostly known for his indie comedies, Kevin Smith might not be the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of legitimately chilling movies, but I’d argue that his 2011 thriller Red State is proof that the director has more up his sleeve than vulgar humor and comic-book references. Now that the film is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and with Smith set to return to horror with the Creepshow-inspired Kilroy Was Here, I think this is the perfect time to look back on his surprisingly effective take on religious terror.
If you haven’t seen it, Red State follows a group of teenagers who drive out to meet an older woman after being enticed with the promise of group sex. Naturally, the arrangement turns out to be a trap, and the teens find themselves kidnapped by the Five Points Trinity Church, an extremist Christian sect hell-bent on making an example out of these young sinners. Meanwhile, the authorities are alerted to the church’s suspicious actions and decide to pay a visit, with the investigation soon escalating into all-out carnage in an unpredictable thriller.
There’s a lot more to the film than this setup, with the story heading into unexpected directions as bodies begin to pile and the situation becomes more desperate. In fact, Red State‘s constantly evolving script means that it feels like a different movie every 15 minutes, even making you question who’s the real protagonist and making it impossible to predict where this bonkers plot is headed as it defies genre expectations. The movie can go from Hostel to The Wicker Man without a second’s notice, and that manic energy is precisely what makes it so entertaining.
Kevin Smith at his most versatile.
Like most of Smith’s output, Red State undeniably has a sense of (mostly dark) humor, with moments like Sheriff Wynan’s near-slapstick levels of incompetence and the general absurdity of watching middle-aged church-folk arming themselves with assault rifles, but it’s certainly not a comedy. These brief laughs are mostly used to establish character traits and keep viewers on their toes as they anticipate the next disturbing scene. This general weirdness and the breakneck pacing might not be to everyone’s liking, but I see it as the film’s greatest strength, allowing Smith to play around with genre tropes in new and exciting ways
Despite the overall insanity, it’s clear that the director is borrowing from real world horrors when telling this eerie fable, taking inspiration from notorious figures like Jim Jones and Fred Phelps while also referencing infamous events like the Waco siege of ’93. Even back in 2011, Smith intended to show how excessive publicity can push some of these far-right groups to even more heinous acts, which is something that would only get worse in the following years with the rise of social media politics and fake news.
The believable script isn’t Red State‘s only asset, with Smith taking a lo-fi approach to filmmaking that only enhances the story’s chaotic elements. Featuring messy digital photography and quick and dirty cuts mostly done on the spot (as the director edited most of the movie during shooting), the film makes you feel like you’re really trapped alongside these characters in a terrifying and confusing situation. It was also mostly shot in sequence, allowing performances to escalate naturally from an acting perspective.
Speaking of acting, John Goodman stands out with his portrayal of a jaded federal agent who’s been ordered to silence all witnesses, and Michael Angarano, Nicholas Braun and Kyle Gallner make for a charming trio of fun-loving teenagers. However, there’s no denying that Michael Parks‘ fanatical Abin Cooper is the main attraction here, lighting up the screen with his compelling fire-and-brimstone sermons and a fatherly demeanor in a performance that highlights just how easy it is to fall into cults of personality. Channeling real world preachers (with some inspiration from fascist leaders for added flavor), Parks is equally charming and imposing as the leader of this deadly community, and you understand why his followers are ready to die for his beliefs. It’s no wonder that Smith would once again partner up with the late actor in the underrated Tusk, which features another powerhouse performance by Parks.
Church versus State.
Having grown up in an extremely religious household, I can appreciate how Smith perfectly encapsulates the dangers of cult-like thinking and how these groups can become an echo chamber of hatred when they’re convinced that their harmful beliefs are morally justified. Having the government’s incompetent response escalate the situation into something worse actually makes Red State more believable. The movie’s even more relevant now than it was back in 2011, with online outrage culture making these communities louder and more dangerous.
Kevin Smith is no stranger to religious controversy, especially after Dogma sparked outrage from several religious groups back in ’99, and Red State was no different. A small group of Westboro Baptist Church members even showed up to protest the premiere only to be mocked by the director, who joined in on the fun. Of course, the film’s religious elements were even more pronounced in the original script, which featured an even crazier deus ex machina once heavenly trumpets interrupt the climactic showdown. While the finished film ends on an ironic coincidence, Smith initially meant for the film to conclude with the literal apocalypse. While that might have been a step too far, it’s still fun to imagine a wilder cut of this already-bonkers picture.
At the end of the day, Red State isn’t a perfect movie, suffering from bizarre tonal shifts and a few action sequences that could have benefited from a larger budget, but it’s still a terrifying exploration of weaponized faith and a refreshing change of pace for Kevin Smith as an artist. While the film might not fulfill the horrific promises of its first act, it remains a unique example of religious horror that’s even more thrilling 10 years down the line.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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