'Red State' trailer makes for an awesome early Christmas present

Posted Friday, December 24, 2010 at 10:29 AM Central
Last updated Friday, December 24, 2010 at 12:25 PM Central

by John Couture

As anyone who follows this site with any regularity can attest, we write a lot about Kevin Smith and his new movie Red State is certainly no exception. You can look down below, we've written no fewer than six stories on Red State in the past few months.

Obviously, a lot of our decision to post these stories is a reflection of our audience. Like us, you are fans of Kev's previous works and have a vested interest into this new direction in which he has decided to pursue for Red State.

Kevin posted a litany of tweets yesterday in which he acknowledged his challenging year and thanked his twitter followers for keeping the faith (no pun intended). As a thank you and early Christmas present, he then posted the long-awaited teaser trailer for Red State which you can see below.

The teaser itself delivers as advertised. It certainly doesn't look like anything that Kevin Smith has done up to this point and it effectively presents Red State as a gritty thriller/horror movie. What do you think?

Perhaps the most overlooked part of the trailer and the most appealing to me is the inclusion of two new urls at the end of it. The first url, coopersdell.com, appears to be a repository of all of the marketing materials that they have released for the movie. You can see the various character posters and download the teaser.

It's the other url, goddamnsusa.com, that really piqued my interest. The site looks to either be the start of a viral campaign for the flick or a tool to help lay some backstory for Red State. The creepy page currently has an article "stapled" to it that goes into more detail about Abin Cooper and his Five Points Church ministry.

There are also other creepy elements around the clipping and one hopes that this is a site that will evolve as the movie approaches its debut at Sundance.

Finally, perhaps the most intriguing piece of information released in this trailer is the bold prediction of a March 2011 release for Red State. With the movie most likely picking up a distributor at Sundance, a two month turn around between pickup and release is aggressive to be sure.

But this is a project in which Kevin Smith has continually broken all of the rules, so why should its theatrical release be any different? Besides, the sooner we get to see it, the better in my book.