Calculated to outrage and executed to underwhelm, Kevin Smith's Red State is like a dull blade slashing wildly, predictably and ineffectually at its target.

| Dec 13, 2011

It's a charming if conspicuously unfinished film, a half-riotous, half-idiotic send-up of the teen horror genre with a vaguely hip political twist.

Full Review | Oct 20, 2011

Kevin Smith fans will be curious about Red State, but few others will be able to endure its tub-thumping attempts at topicality or its lack of storytelling skill.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 18, 2011

It's a really strange film, terribly violent on one level and on another filled with lengthy, long-winded philosophical discourses and blind alleys

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 12, 2011

In its efforts to accommodate Smith's argument the storyline gets decidedly messy. The slacker has become didactic and it doesn't suit him one bit.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 12, 2011

It becomes crude, equal-opportunity comedy...

| Oct 2, 2011

Scatters its plotlines all over the place and doesn't seem able to match its comedy with the parodic blood-letting.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 30, 2011

Ugly characterizations and simplistic preachiness negate the terror in Red State-a film that eventually proves horrific in ways unintended by writer/director Kevin Smith.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 30, 2011

This is Smith's best film for a while.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2011

The movie undeniably has Things To Say about America's culture wars, but it would be easier to respect if Smith's borrowings from Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers weren't so blatant and fanboy-ish.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 29, 2011

Please don't quit, Kev. We've forgiven you for Jersey Girl. Honest.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2011

If nothing else, it's nice to see this director refusing to play by the rules of the multiplex.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 27, 2011

One of those movies that's "interesting" rather than "good."

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 26, 2011

Undeniably flawed, but Smith manages to find a unique balance between campy fun and disturbing violence that makes the film a sick and twisted experience you can oddly enjoy.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 23, 2011

Wants so badly to push viewers' buttons, but struggles to reach them more often than not.

| Sep 23, 2011

Smith isn't up to doing anything other than setting up caricatures and then knocking them down.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 22, 2011

For all its boisterous profanity and splattery violence, the film is more of a weary sigh than a sputtering volley of indignation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 22, 2011

With Red State, Smith ventures far outside his comfort zone of endlessly chatty films about pop-culture-damaged slackers and into exhilaratingly unfamiliar waters. He's taking as many bold chances artistically as he is commercially.

| Original Score: B- | Sep 22, 2011

Neither the masterpiece Smith's partisans claim nor the bomb his detractors insist.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 5, 2011

Kevin Smith may not care what I have to say, and may be inexplicably trying to keep me from saying it, but here goes: 'Red State' is sturdy, unnerving, and kind of brilliant.

| Mar 19, 2011