Red State

Red State (2011) is Kevin Smith's hard-edged horror-thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. It's a sharp left turn for the director best known for the Jay and Silent Bob comedies, trading laughs for something genuinely nasty.

Three high schoolers in small-town America answer an online hookup ad. The woman who lured them is bait: they wake up bound inside the chapel of a fundamentalist sect. Its preacher, Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), believes sinners must be executed in God's name. When the teens make a break for it and stumble onto a stash of guns, federal agents are already surrounding the compound — and the ATF man played by John Goodman realizes the standoff is about to become a slaughter.

Smith torches expectations at every turn: characters you've followed get killed off without warning, and the movie slides from teen scare flick into a vicious satire of religious zealotry and trigger-happy authority. Parks as the soft-spoken zealot is reason enough to watch on his own. It won't be for everyone, but viewers up for something unsettling and unpredictable will be rewarded. Stream Red State (2011) online on iFILM.