Synopsis
A dispossessed, violent man's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, he descends to the level of a cave dweller and falls deeper into crime and degradation.
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Cast
- Scott HazeLester Ballard
- Wade Hunt WilliamsNarrator
- James FrancoJerry
- Tim Blake NelsonSheriff Fate
- Jim ParrackDeputy Cotton
- Fallon GoodsonGirly
- Vince JolivetteErnest
- Jeremy AmblerBoy With The Rifle
- Elena McGheeLady In White
- Coby BattyHunter
Recommendations
- 80
The Guardian
Child of God is a shocking tale of backwoods lunacy and one man's descent into hell. Perhaps the most shocking thing about it is that it's really rather good. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
Dramatically, Child of God is hit or miss; some scenes are ferociously captivating while others are given clumsy handling, almost to the point of indifference. - 60
Variety
The crazed intensity of Franco’s filmmaking, while duly evocative of Haze’s primitive state, is ultimately too hectic and unmodulated for anything to burrow deep and stay there. - 50
Slant Magazine
James Franco's general aesthetic is ugly and ambling, not so much because of its brownish-gray monochrome, but because it registers like the jerky result of a college kid wielding a DV cam. - 40
Time Out
It could have been so much worse; we wish it was a lot better. - 30
The Dissolve
What’s left in the absence of McCarthy’s prose is a sincere but fundamentally pointless ode to a madman, which does little more than invite viewers to gawk at the unspeakable. - 30
Village Voice
As it stands, Child of God is brazenly, outstandingly bad, as vague, pretentious, and pointless as its sorry title. But it's certainly memorable, full of inadvertent howlers and destined to create a whole new subgenre of burlesque, audience-torturing cinema. - 25
The Playlist
The whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends.
