Child of God Movie

In a risky performance consisting of simian gestures and dialogue delivered through teeth too big for his head, Scott Haze plays the diseased Tennessee outcast of Cormac McCarthy’s 1973 novel. The character poops in the woods, rapes corpses, and dresses in his victims’ scalped hair and clothing — and co-writer/director James Franco shows us every grotesque minute of it. He isn’t breaking narrative ground — surely he’s seen Taxi Driver and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer — but should get credit for tweaking the book’s ending (a no-no in McCarthyland) and for possessing the willpower to make a movie that virtually no one is going to see. B