This isn't your older brother's Kevin Smith.
The New Jersey indie filmmaker, made famous for his slacker comedy cult classics 'Clerks' and 'Mallrats,' is taking aim at a new genre: religious/political horror -- one he's helping to coin himself.
Smith has released the first trailer for his upcoming film, 'Red State,' a frightening look at religious extremism in America, based in part on anti-gay, anti-America Kansas pastor Fred Phelps. Frightening and thrilling for Smith: the film has no distributor yet; he plans on screening it at Sundance Film Festival, and then holding an auction for its rights in public view.
Long interested in religion -- he tackled the topic with his earlier film, 'Dogma' -- Smith is engaging in his first horror film, though he's long been a fan of the genre. John Goodman, Dermot Mulroney, Michael Angarano and Michael Parks co-star in the thriller.
Here's what Smith told the site RottenTomatoes.com about the inspiration behind his film:
The movie's called 'Red State' and it's very much about that subject matter, that point of view and that position taken to the absolute extreme. It's certainly not Phelps himself but it's very much inspired by a Phelps figure.
And to me, too, the notion of using a Phelps-like character as a villain, as horrifying and scary as that guy can be, there's even something more insidious than him that lurks out there in as much as a public or a government that allows it and that's the other thing that I'm trying to examine in a big, big way.