"Red State"
Premieres
***
Kevin Smith is the master of bait-and-switch, as demonstrated by his non-auction "auction" at the Eccles screening tonight and even more forcefully by the movie itself. Smith puts in his hooks with an intense horror-thriller with an evangelical preacher (MIchael Parks) whose congregation lures homosexuals and fornicators -- like the three horny high-schoolers (Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner and Nicholas Broun) we meet at the beginning -- via the Internet and exacts bloody retribution. But the movie shifts radically in a different direction (only hint: Waco) when John Goodman first appears. It's still a Kevin Smith movie, full of large chunks of cleverly arch dialogue. But Smith mounts some impressively violent sequences, and has as his trump card a compelling performance by Parks, who makes the preacher's brand of bible-thumping evil almost persuasive.
"Red State" screens again at: Monday, Jan. 24, at 8:30 a.m. at the Library Center Theatre, Park City.
- Sean P. Means
