The first stills from Red State are out on the town, and they sure don’t look much like the usual high-key, non-aggressive images we’re used to from Kevin Smith films. Actually, they don’t look like much of anything, but they’re just character shots with little context. What is obvious though, is that Smith has at least broken out enough to make a movie that won’t fit as snugly into his oeuvre visually.

In the pictures we’ve got a reasonably creepy-looking Michael Parks, a rough-around-the-edges John Goodman, and some scared looking young folks. These are no Roger Deakins stills, but Smith’s routine cinematographer David Klein* has managed to shift visual tone to match Smith’s horror intentions, though it remains to be seen how much the director himself has changed up his approach. The film has been accepted into Sundance, so we’ll see if Smith goes through with his silly little sales stunt.

These come from ShockTillYouDrop, and there are high-res versions of the same stills to be found there.

*…who also shot that movie twenty-dollar-grossing movie Zyzzyx Rd, the story of which went viral when CHUD picked it up, and even interviewed the director.)