50
Metascore
17 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 80The GuardianXan BrooksThe GuardianXan BrooksChild 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.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyThe Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyDramatically, Child of God is hit or miss; some scenes are ferociously captivating while others are given clumsy handling, almost to the point of indifference.
- 60VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangThe 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.
- 50Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundSlant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundJames 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.
- 40Time OutDavid FearTime OutDavid FearIt could have been so much worse; we wish it was a lot better.
- 30The DissolveMike D'AngeloThe DissolveMike D'AngeloWhat’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.
- 30Village VoiceSam WeisbergVillage VoiceSam WeisbergAs 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.
- 25The PlaylistOliver LytteltonThe PlaylistOliver LytteltonThe whole thing feels sort of tossed off, like it was made by film students over a couple of weekends.
- 25New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickChild 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.