A Religious Fanaticism Twofer

Movies: Camp Hell, Red State

Movies that mock religion are always shaky ground. They run the risk of being obvious and ham-fisted--of using a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel to dissect people's very personal beliefs. Bill Maher's documentary Religulous is a perfect example of a filmmaker shooting fish in a barrel and preaching to the choir. Maher picks easy targets: people too dumb to defend their own beliefs with any sort of critical thinking or self-reflection. Instead of making a genuine attempt to explore the intricacies and hypocrisy of religion, Maher simply laughs his ass off at the idiots. But the conclusion he reaches is less "religious people are stupid" and more "stupid people are stupid". It's the film equivalent of People of Walmart: such an easy target, the shooter (in this case, Maher) should be embarrassed.

It takes sensitivity, finesse, and (I would argue) a personal knowledge of religion in order to properly question/satirize religion. Outsiders rarely get it--they just see a bunch of delusional morons praying to what they believe to be an invisible and non-existent bearded dude in the sky. But someone who understands the minds, language, and emotions of those believers can simultaneously skewer and pay homage to religion. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are a good example of people who do religious satire correctly. Another example is Kevin Smith, whose film Dogma mocked the Catholic Church in a loving and absurd manner. His casting of Alanis Morrisette as God (I know, right?) did not intend to belittle Catholicism, as some believed, but to make a point about how we don't know shit about the nature of God and who he/she/it is. At least that was how I interpreted it.

In Red State, Smith's horror film that blatantly mocks (while also giving three dimensions to) Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, is another insightful take down of religious belief gone mad. In Red State, three high school boys living in a conservative town spend an evening seeking out what they believe will be easy sex with a middle-aged woman. They end up drugged and chained in the basement of the "Five Points Church", run by the charismatic and insane Abin Cooper (Michael Parks in an excellent and terrifying performance). Cooper is an obvious nod toward Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" fame. He is the leader of a so-called "church", which is more of a cult made up of his own family and their spouses. Cooper directs his greatest ire towards the "homosexuals", who he believes are destroying America.

The major difference between the fictional Cooper and the real Phelps is that Cooper and his family take their beliefs to the bloody extreme: they lure sinners into their homes, drug them, and then murder them as part of their worship services (after taking the children out of the room, of course). The three boys who go out seeking sex find themselves in a Waco-like struggle for survival when the local authorities--and then the Feds--get involved.

Red State was nothing like I expected it to be. I thought it would be straight-forward horror with a blundering take on religious fundamentalists. I was wrong. Red State doesn't mock Christians so much as it mocks cults. Abin Cooper's "church" is so obviously unlike any normal--even ultraconservative--church, that it bears no resemblance to Christianity.

In addition, although Red State begins like your typical torture-porn films, with sexually active teens ending up drugged, bound, and gagged; the film took increasingly radical (yet plausible) turns that I did not see coming. My mind was blown from start to finish.

Red State, as fans of Smith will make clear, is not a typical Kevin Smith film. It definitely has moments of crude humor, a la Clerks, but that humor is all but shut down when the bullets start flying. I want to warn folks that this is a very, very violent movie. It's not as grotesque as, say, Saw, but there is a scene in the first half of the movie where the men of Five Points Church kidnap a gay man, saran wrap him to a cross on their church's altar, and shoot him in the head point-blank as he begs for his life through a ball gag. It is one of the most psychologically distressing scenes of cruelty I've watched--and I watch a lot of movies. In my opinion, Smith is able to toe the line between exploitation and violence that is relevant to the plot of the film. Those who are sensitive to violence won't enjoy this movie, but horror and independent film aficionados will probably be able to stomach it. Oh and PS: even though women do get killed in Red State, the film is very much NOT exploitative towards women in general. Which is a nice departure from a lot of horror films.

Red State didn't get the greatest reviews when it first came out, so my expectations were low. The film was a pleasant surprise and kept me on the edge of my seat and  guessing about what turns it would take until the final scene. I really enjoyed it.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Camp Hell, on the other hand, was not remotely as good as Red State. Camp Hell is a little-seen indie horror movie from 2010. The description on Netflix claims the movie "stars" Jesse Eisenberg. Wrong. Eisenberg is in two scenes. He probably has a grand total of 5 minutes of screen time.

Instead, Camp Hell stars a number of unknowns as the religious campers at Camp Hope, a Christian retreat for extremely fundamentalist teenagers. I couldn't figure out what religious denomination these people were supposed to be part of. Bruce Davison plays a priest who runs the camp, but the teens clearly aren't Catholic. Or maybe they're an obscure, ultraconservative Catholic sect. I honestly couldn't tell. Either the filmmakers know very little about religious denominations, or they didn't want to insult a particular denomination so they just made up some generic, conservative sect.

In any case, the basic plot of Camp Hell is this: Tommy Leary (Will Denton) is a teen at Camp Hope who is experiencing increasingly frightening visions and dreams. After he takes his crush, Melissa, out to the woods and dry humps her, all hell literally breaks loose, bringing tangible evil into the camp. It's up to Father McCallister to fight back against the evil at hand. Tommy Leary does his part by deciding not to believe in this shit any more and therefore lessening the power this evil has over him.

So...the moral of the story appears to be: 1) dry humping causes the devil to emerge from hell and terrorize teens at camp (a pretty hilarious, yet apt take on the "sexually active teens in horror films" trope), 2) If you believe in conservative, highly-supernatural religion, you will go insane and kill everyone you love, 3) If you make a conscious decision not to believe in any of that crap, you'll be fine and live a normal life. Sounds about right to me.

In addition to the shaky theology and horror-film cliches, the actual horror element of Camp Hell is pretty weak tea. I'm generally not scared by demon/devil possession movies to begin with, but even the climax of this film was not impressive in the least. Camp Hell reminded me of Lucky McKee's film The Woods: about a coven of witches that run a girls boarding school in the 1960's. Camp Hell, like The Woods, had an interesting premise and indie cred, but in the end was all bark and no bite. Ultimately, Camp Hell is simply an unsatisfying, cliched horror film.

2.5 out of 5 stars