Asked to describe his latest movie Red State, an unconventional horror that opens in the UK this weekend, Kevin Smith says the move is more than a little different from those that made his name.
The director who shot to fame with Clerks 17 years ago has become synonymous with a certain type of slacker comedy. Red State, a tense thriller that centres on an extremist church, is a departure from his usual style.
“It's not a typical Kevin Smith movie,” he says. “I always joke and say it's not a comedy like Clerks or Mallrats, it's a horror movie like Jersey Girl.
“It is different. I'm known for making, for lack of a better expression, 'Kevin Smith movies'. This movie, I call it a horror movie, some people don't see it that way.”
Drawing on a number of different influences, Red State shifts tone throughout, beginning like a conventional horror before twisting and turning to a wholly unexpected conclusion. It’s an experimental approach that Smith says he enjoyed, though he readily admits it defies conventions.
“It's really a genre mash-up movie, a bunch of different movies crammed into one,” he explains.
“It plays like Hostel for a minute, and then it becomes another movie when we introduce John Goodman as an ATF agent who is called into a situation where he has no idea what's going on.
“It's this kind of weird, spinning,turning table type movie. It's not so much a film, I feel guilty calling it because a film is like three act story with traditional structure. This is very unconventional storytelling.”
Deliberately setting out to wrong-foot the audience, Smith reveals that he consciously avoided the obvious next-step during the writing process.
“We kind of get you looking one way and then punch you from the right. It should constantly surprise the audience because when i was writing it, any time I thought 'I know where this is going'...I just jumped.
“We watch so many movies now that after 20 minutes you can go: 'He did it'. You can just guess it from the outset. I didn't want to do that.
"It's this fun parlour trick of a flick with brilliant performance in it by a great cast.
“It's ballsy, it's dangerous, it's weird. it's going to work for some people and fail miserably for other but nobody is going to sit there and go 'meh'.”
He adds that he sees a connection between his latest work and his first.
“I look at Red State as kind of like the sequel to Clerks,” he says. “Clerks was a move that showed a lot of f***ing promise...and Red State is the delivery on that promise."
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