James Franco is a talented actor who more than dabbles in, well, everything. The one activity he’s most likely not good at is sleep. Where he can find the time to write poetry, teach, earn degrees, and, oh, direct a movie based on a Cormac McCarthy novel Lord only knows.

Child of God is certainly not a terrible film, nor is it a particularly good one. Overall, it has a solid structure and a singular main character, but Franco all too often goes for shock value that distract from the main theme rather than enhancing it.

The story concerns one Lester Ballard, a feral, deranged denizen of a small Southern town in the 1960s. His father being dead and his mother having hightailed it before he was nigh 10, Lester has been on his own and neglected by pretty much all the townsfolk, and he has reverted into a primal state. Wandering the woods around town and shooting cows for fun, he’s more of a general nuisance than anything else. And then his father’s property gets repossessed and things go downhill for everyone.

Franco is clearly trying to get at what happens in world with a general lack of caring for your fellow man, and he draws out a commanding, out-there lead performance from Scott Haze, but he distances the audience instantly from Lester by having him take an actual dump on screen in the first five minutes. Seriously, it’s like dropping chum in the water for critics, “The film starts off shitty and gets worse from there.” And as a general rule, one act of necrophilia is sufficient, but you really don’t need two. Luckily, Franco doesn’t go for a third time because he must know from whence comedy comes.

All of these, frankly, film school antics don’t completely dilute the power of the piece. There are some lovely moments, and the aforementioned Scott Haze gives such a raw, visceral, balls-out (literally) performance that I’m pretty sure Klaus Kinski is sitting up in his grave in admiration. Haze lets you into Lester’s pain and anger and the occasionally childlike innocence that surrounds his rage. The rest of the characters barely register as one note, though Tim Blake Nelson gives a notable performance as the glum, hard-as-nails town sheriff by force of will.

This hard-to-embrace film isn’t quite worth an hour and half of your time, except perhaps to see Haze seize a nearly impossible role and shake it until all the goodies come out. Hopefully, he will soon find a project worthy of his talent.