Red State
Short description
Three teenagers in the American Midwest arrange a sexual encounter with a woman they met online, only to find that the invitation was a trap set by a group of religious extremists. Held captive by a congregation led by the preacher Abin Cooper, the boys are viewed by their captors as sinners who must be punished. The film follows the resulting confrontation, which draws in an FBI agent named Joseph Keenan. It was inspired by Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.
Kevin Smith wrote and directed the film, the tenth of the seventeen features he has directed to date, arriving between Cop Out and Tusk. It marked a return to self-made, low-budget filmmaking after the earlier studio project, made without his longtime producing partner. Michael Parks plays Pastor Abin Cooper, with John Goodman as Joseph Keenan, and Melissa Leo, Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner and Nicholas Braun among the main cast. The film runs 88 minutes and was made for about 4 million dollars, taking roughly 2 million dollars worldwide, so it did not recoup its budget in cinemas.
On IMDb it holds 6.1 out of 10 from around 70,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6 out of 10 from just over a thousand votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 89 reviews puts it close to both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Due to budget constraints, Kevin Smith had to film near Los Angeles.
- In the scene where John Goodman's character yells at Stephen Root's character to get back in the car, Root stumbles and falls. The script didn't call for the fall, but the footage made it into the film. Root later recounted that Goodman's shout genuinely caught him off guard, and the fall was unintentional.
- Filming took 25 days. The use of cameras from Red Digital Cinema Camera Company allowed director Kevin Smith to edit fresh footage immediately after the end of each shooting day. As a result, the fully edited and ready-for-release film was shown to the cast and crew just two days after filming wrapped. This took place at a wrap party.
- Initially, Kevin Smith intended to film the execution of the first “prisoner” with a goat’s head placed over their head. The special effects supervisor suggested that Smith likely meant a ram’s head, as a goat’s head is too small. Shortly after, Smith found out that creating a ram’s head would cost $5,000, which was the entire budget allocated for special effects, and he abandoned the idea.
- Screenwriter and director Kevin Smith wrote the role of the pastor specifically for Michael Parks (1940-2017) after seeing him in Robert Rodriguez’s “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996). As Smith later confessed, he would have abandoned the entire project had Parks refused to participate.
- At the very end of the film, director and screenwriter Kevin Smith played a cameo role as a prisoner.
- Samuel L. Jackson was initially considered for the role that John Goodman eventually played.
- Due to the limited budget, the roles of minor characters were played by relatives and friends of the actors and crew members. Ivy Kline, the daughter of cinematographer David Kline, played one such role. Ivy was prepared for a long time for the scene where Carrie Bishop's character tells three girls to hide in the attic. When it came time to film the scene, Ivy genuinely became frightened and screamed, which was not in the script. Kevin Smith subsequently used this footage in the film with the girl's parents’ permission.
- Nicholas Braun sustained a concussion during filming. It happened during a firecracker explosion, which caused a box to fall from a shelf onto the actor's head. Braun was taken directly from the set to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. The medical staff was shocked by the gunshot wound makeup applied to the actor.
- During the filming of the scene where his character is tied to the cross, actor Kyle Gallner experienced a genuine bout of terror. The rest of the film crew didn’t pay much attention to it, assuming the actor was getting into character.
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