James Franco’s latest vanity project is a tedious adaptation of an early Cormac McCarthy book about a feral homeless psychopath in early 1960s Tenneesee. Franco shows Lester (Scott Haze), who appears to be around 40, squatting in the woods and defecating into the camera before imperfectly cleaning himself with a branch.
Lester declines mentally to the point that when he discovers a dead woman in an automobile, he has sex with the corpse and then drags it back to the abandoned shack where he lives for further use. When the corpse is destroyed in a fire, he eagerly goes looking for a replacement despite the suspicions of the local sheriff (Tim Blake Nelson).
“Child of God’’ is, like the source novel, loosely inspired by the notorious real-life cannibal murderer Ed Gein. So was Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.’’ Nobody left that classic bored — but they sure will be by Franco’s film.