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I can't think of anything worse, a film directed by James Franco based
on a Cormac McCarthy novel.
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James Franco wallows around in the backwoods muck with his latest
directorial effort, Child of God, an adaptation of the 1973 Cormac
McCarthy novel about a psychotic hick named Lester (Scott Haze) whose
1960s Tennessee life is defined by ever-abhorrent behavior. An opening
close-up of Lester, his eyes turned upward in a menacing glare that
invokes memories of many animalistic Stanley Kubrick protagonists,
immediately establishes the feral nature of the story’s main character,
who is then shown wildly objecting to the sale of his father’s farm.
Split into three chapters, and embellished with a few instances of
onscreen text as well as occasional narration from a variety of
unidentified speakers, Lester’s subsequent saga is one of amplifying
madness, as he sets up new residence in an abandoned woodland cabin,
spies on the man who bought his daddy’s home, and gets his rocks off
peeping on kids having sex in remotely parked cars.
With spittle flying from his mouth, snot dangling from his nose, and
slurry speech emanating from his filthy, beard-framed mouth, Lester
exudes unhinged wildness, and his preference for groaning, growling and
howling further solidifies him as more rabid dog than civilized man.
Voiceover exposition reveals that Lester’s father abandoned him via
suicide, though otherwise Child of God provides scant background on its
center of attention, content to simply gaze with horrified fascination
at Lester, whom Haze embodies with a full-throated lunacy that’s
consistently captivating, at least until his screaming-crazy routine
reveals itself to be one-note. At that point—which, admittedly, is about
a third of the way through the story—the film turns monotonous, even as
Lester indulges in increasingly wretched behavior that pushes the film
into grim, sadistic territory.
full:
http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3id12aca65814125e6d099f85b5d36115e
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