In the space of two days, both Kevin Smith and Morgan Spurlock premiered their new films at Sundance. One selling out to the max, the other teasing the buyers of the film industry with an invitation to bid on his film – only to flip it around at the last minute and use the time to bulldoze into everything corporate about the film industry.

Spurlock returned to the screen for his Q&A head to toe in what can best be described as a pilot’s suit made out of marketing, whereas Smith reappeared in a shining yellow hockey get-up, apparently prepared to smash through corporate ‘horseshit’ with a hockey stick made out of justice.

While Spurlock beamed from ear to ear sandwiched between the leaders of the brands he had mocked, in his documentary, exposing the absurdity of product placement, Smith laid into what he referred to as the soulless horseshit of money sources in film. But it seemed that nothing should be taken at face value.

Smith’s speech was brilliant, amusing and a great air punch for independent film – although it also seemed to be a well-devised marketing ploy for Red State. But it was entertaining just to watch the hoards of people filing out of the hoax auction, because most of them were buyers, who only come to these screenings to sit at the back and calculate, and rarely have much interest in the film itself other than its potential grossing figures.

He had worked his way up to this point, discussing the production cost of Red State and ruminating over how much it would cost to recoup and the kind of offers he predicted. He mentioned howClerks had taken seven years to make the money back and finally invited his producer, John to open the auction. John opens it, Kevin buys it, and the rest was “fuck you, movie business!”

There were protestors (allegedly from Fred Phelps’ camp) before Smith’s premiere, of the ‘God hates fags’ variety, distressed by the close-to-the-bone characterisation of Pastor Phelps as a batshit serial killer. These fundamentalists were met with Smith, Jason Mewes and colleagues, with their own pickets, including ‘God loves Mewes’ and ‘Dick is Yummy’.

It was very funny, and a smart move on Smith’s part. It was a circus. He announced that Red State is to be his penultimate film, after which he plans to focus on SModcast, a new online distribution model that he has developed himself, in order to support independent film.

On the other side of the court, Spurlock was laying it on thick with the brand leaders and their graciousness for collaborating with the project. It was hard to determine if he was aware that they hadn’t really all entered an intelligent debate together about the presence of product placement in the modern world… It simply was product placement to them.

After all the smart gags in the film, there was something unhinged about the row of ecstatic sweaty smiles surrounding Spurlock, grateful for their educational role in the satire upon soulless, desperate advertising.

Red State is brutal and funny. What starts out as a typical teen movie – three teenage boys on a mission to get laid – swiftly descends into a chaotic blood bath that is both frightening and original. Smith builds up expectations and undermines them throughout, with a thunderous use of sound, to generate an unnerving feeling of being completely at sea with the direction of the narrative (particularly at Sundance venue Eccles, where the huge screen and sound system fit for 1200 seats has been known to provoke seizures under gigantic projections of violent content).

The tight-knit group of friends, Jared, Billy-Ray and Travis, go out to the woods on an internet arrangement, anticipating sex with a woman who lives there in her trailer. Her dark eyes glowering out of her waxy pale skin ooze deranged menace as she feeds them beers laced with sedatives. They awake to find themselves in a sermon, disorientation heightened by the focus drowsily blurring in and out.

The pastor is Abin Cooper, (Michael Parks), a fundamental homophobe who has a man behind him clingfilmed neck to toe to a cross as Cooper animatedly delivers his speech. The horror of the situation is revealed bit by bit, intensified by the religious singing rising from the small joyous congregation, in the face of such cruelty. The frenzied movements of the (fictional) Christian zealots are captured in the high-definition spirit of the 28 Days Later zombies.

When the carnage switches up a notch, John Goodman is brought in as an ATF Agent; head of a protocol following group who find themselves in a heap of bureaucratic nonsense after a minefield of breaches lead them to make more shocking decisions than logic permits.

Red State is a bleak mockery of the idiocy in government protocol, official policy over the ability to judge a situation, and the horror of religious extremism. The film reaches a point when the preacher is squared with John Goodman, and with the help of booming, sonic force it really feels, as the ATF agent mutters, like “simple just shit itself” in a baffling, and pretty alarming way.

And then Kevin Smith returned to stage with the punchline, “Well, that was different!”, before sharing his disgust that it takes so much money to open a movie. He announced that as a result of the obscenity, he was going to do it all himself; take it on tour and eventually self-release it on October 19, the seventeenth anniversary of Clerks release. No commercials, no ads. Which brings us neatly to…

On a mission to make a ‘docbuster’, Spurlock researched the ins and outs of product placement in film, charging all over the country pitching his project, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, to brands. He courts eager brand-blinded dealmakers – one of whom ‘jokingly’ quips “Maybe by the time this film’s out we’ll look like blithering idiots!”

Experts and psychologists elaborate on the structure of advertising, and Spurlock’s first task is to realise that as an individual he too is a brand. Trying to find funding is not so simple and it is understandably the smaller brands, with less legal representation that jump on board, or as Sheetz stores enthusiastically exclaim “are gonna be on that like a wet t-shirt.”

The clauses and hoops through which Spurlock has to jump become something close to a complex, exhausting drinking game; pomegranate juice drink POM require 30 second commercials to appear in the film and every other drink to be blurred out, the requirements of Jet Blue airlines lead to an interview held in an airport and Hyatt hotel sponsorship is paid off by an Anchorman-style ad break featuring Spurlock in soft focus.

The documentary is entertaining and smoothly delivered, laying bare a humourous indifference to relevancy or taste – backed up by Tarantino’s assertion that “they don’t give a flying fuck about art.” In the Q&A Spurlock claimed, in stark contrast to Kevin Smith’s approach, that nothing is sacred anymore.

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