It's an expectedly short way into Child of God that it first becomes apparent that James Franco is striving for a specific style. Between the sporadic, disembodied narration, the even more sporadic text cards and the hand-held cameras, his mark is made and felt early and often. What Franco seems oblivious to is not that these are derivative devices, nor that bungling them (and a bunch of other stylistic tics) together is unwise, but that we too aren't oblivious to their derivativeness. Each of them heralds a pompousness, an assertion of the monumental significance not only of this story but of the way in which it is told, yet in being so pompous, Franco has ensured that this throwaway, threadbare film is anything but significant. There is a certain strength to Cormac McCarthy's story, and a compulsion rife to be exploited in our experience of watching it unfold, but these are undercut by nonsense affectations that serve no purpose. One can imagine Franco's self-satisfaction upon learning how clearly we saw what he did there, and how little we thought it worked. You almost want to rave about Child of God just to rub him up the wrong way. I doubt it'd help. Despite its shapelessness, this film actually improves as it progresses, as it eventually develops a more focused perspective on its central character, whose desperation and depravity only increase. But Franco's insistently forthright, distancing direction removes us from each and every scene in turn - we end up not living through Lester's plight, just observing it, not understanding him, just judging him. And there's a deflating sensation that McCarthy's novel, and Scott Haze's enormously dedicated performance, deserve more than just a judgement. So I'll judge James Franco instead: guilty as charged.
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