A good movie

Even though I wasn't sure what to expect, since I have always been a fan of Kevin Smith, I still wanted to check it out. To be honest, I thought it was actually pretty good and I was above all impressed how Smith managed to make a feature so completely different in tone than his previous movies. Indeed, even Kevin Smith himself has admitted it, even though he might be a decent writer, he remains a rather limited director and if you don't agree, you should just check his filmography. So, I did like this flick, especially the first half was really intriguing with setting up these teenagers and this Christian cult. Unfortunately, I wasn't so sure about the 2nd half. Indeed, at some point, seemingly out of nowhere, some Federal agents got involved and within minutes the whole thing turned into a huge shoot-out which lasted forever. With a running time of barely 80 minutes, you shouldn't spend 20 minutes with people only shooting at each other. The wrap-up at the end with a briefing involving John Goodman was also rather underwhelming. Still, I enjoyed most of it and, in my opinion, in spite of its poor construction, it is a rather tense and realistic horror feature, 10 times better than most of the slasher flicks I have seen and way better than the current torture porn wave.

7/10