FEATURE: Why "Red State" Ended Correctly (And Why That's So Frustrating)

If you're talking about Red State after the movie's over, you're talking about how the movie ends.  Because Red State has a profoundly anticlimactic ending, an ending that goes far beyond blueballs and literally cuts the the testicles off all of its viewers, including the women.  This sucks, and it's led to quite a few commenters online discussing how the ending could be improved.  However, I don't think the ending is wrong, or that it could be bettered.  That flat sense of frustration is the point.

A very, very quick recap.  Red State centers on an emergent Waco-style standoff between homo-bashing fundamentalists and anxious ATF grunts, with some dopey teens caught in the crossfire.  Late in the film, the standoff erupts into a full-scale war.  Blood bursts from bodies like candy from pinatas.  People on both sides drop.  After a prolonged gunfight, it looks like the church crazies are about to lose.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere...

Enormous horn blasts.

Abin hears the trumpets.

Yes, with maybe ten minutes to go in the film - a film about nuts who can't wait to murder and die for Jesus (Jesus the Fag-Hater, natch) - enormous horn blasts.  Yes, it sounds like the Heavens are parting, the seven trumpets are bellowing, and the worst possible outcome is outcoming.  The lunatics were right all along.  There is a God, and he's coming down to pass judgment on us all.  Preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) leaves his house, tosses down his gun, and cackles at the sky.

Director Kevin Smith does something insane with this moment.  He cuts away.  He doesn't even show what happens next.  He moves straight from the mysterious horn blasts to, of all places, a bureaucratic inquiry setting.  The hero of the story, Keenan (John Goodman), very much alive and reasonably well-adjusted, explains the horn-related drama and resolution to a couple of smirking suits.

Turns out that the Revelations-style moment, with the loud unseen horns heralding the end-times, is a narrative fake-out.  A con.  A conceit.  Definitely a contrivance.  Those horns were nothing but some rowdy neighbors pranking the fundies with a decommissioned fire house horn for cheap kicks.  No apocalypse today, just a practical joke that occurs at exactly the right time for the story to resolve positively.

This is wrong, right?  It's definitely frustrating.  Maybe even maddening.  But necessary.

Abin emerges from hiding...

I said some positive things about Red State a while back, and, buried in my thoughts, I pointed out that Kevin Smith organizes his cast at the end credits into three distinct categories: sex, religion, and politics.  As the popular saying goes, those are the three things you don't talk about in polite company.  Looking at those credits, I saw a clue to reading the film and understanding the point it's raising.  Because Red State isn't a film about religion.  It's a film about responsibility.

"Sex" refers to those teenagers who instigate the whole plot with their hormonal quest for fuckable locals.  "Religion" refers to the church that abducts and murders gays in the name of God.  "Politics" refer to the soldiers who are just following orders.  All three groups share one key element: they all appeal to higher authorities.  They all try to get themselves off the hook for their actions.  Don't blame us, it's our testosterone.  Don't blame us, God wants us to do this.  Don't blame us, we have our marching orders.

Abin confronts Keenan.

This becomes clearer towards the end, when Keenan's character arc hinges on whether or not he'll follow the orders from the brass (hah) and mow down the entire church enclave.  His refusal to do so is what sets him apart from all the other characters in the movie.  Keenan refuses to do as he's told.  He takes responsibility for his actions.  The closest thing he has to an absolute authority is the voice inside him that says, "This is wrong, and you know it."

So, why does that mean we can't have our end-times party?

Because the Rapture lets everyone off the hook.  If God exists and raptures the world at the end of the film, then there really was some power that worth following absolutely all along.  The problem with the characters now isn't that they abdicated their moral responsibility.  Instead, they simply didn't abdicate it correctly, to the right power they should have trusted absolutely.  A film that is fundamentally about the importance of skepticism in higher powers shouldn't bring out an unignorable higher power in the final minutes.  That kind of ending would undercut the entire message.

ATF agents consider Keenan's fate.

In fairness, it's worth noting that Kevin Smith originally considered ending the film with the actual Rapture, although the twist was that Cooper and his worshipers were the first on the divine chopping block.  He decided against it for budgetary reasons, along with the admission that he was stoned out of his mind when he conceived of the idea.

That decision resulted in an ending that builds up the foundation of something grandiose... and then crushes that foundation into rubble.  What a loss, I've heard many say, underwhelmed that the ending gave them medicine instead of punch and pie.  I agree.  It's very frustrating.  That's life.  The fim's world, much like our own, is one where loud horns are invariably nothing more than loud horns.  It's a world where characters have to stop skipping culpability with just-following-orders bullshit.  This whole subject reminds me of the afterword for Stephen King's final Dark Tower novel.  King's gained some notoriety for his sometimes-limp endings, and he copped to the idea of his Tower ending frustrating readers in an afterword.

His note:  "I wasn't exactly crazy about the ending, either, if you want to know the truth, but it's the right ending.  The only ending."