I looove Kevin Smith, always have and always will, but I'm willing to admit that the man is a much better writer/speaker than he is a director. Red State was just poorly directed, it had no cohesiveness to the story, couldn't decide who the protagonist was and John Goodman's part was really not done very well. A lot of Smith's experimental camera angles and shots seemed like just that, and didn't visually contribute anything to either the movie or the action.

That said, as should be expected from a Kevin Smith movie, the large majority of the dialogue was fantastic, and Michael Parks is an insanely good actor. The entire sermon that Cooper gives was the real highlight for the film, both in writing and delivery. Also, the dialogue between the teens was fresh and felt genuine. I really wanted to like Red State, as it's one of Smith's last movies for the foreseeable future (along with some hockey movie that's in production), but I think that he's better off sticking to his (amazing) podcasts and maybe doing some screenplays from now on. He'll never be able to recapture the allure of his earlier movies and he just doesn't have the directorial goods to make the jump from indie filmmaker to an amazing feature director.