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Such a frustrating disappointment

Overrated

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie is actually pretty good. The problem with it is that it does not stand alone as a movie. If you haven't read the book, you probably won't like the movie. If you have read the book, then you will enjoy this adaptation of a sympathetic depiction of a lonely serial killer.

I give anyone props on taking on a Cormac McCarthy novel and trying to make a film out of it. There have been a few successes "No Country for Old Men", "All the Pretty Horses" and maybe "The Road" -- I found that film below average, myself. But hey, who am I but no one. Did Franco fair well with this one? I don't know yet, I'm only 21 minutes in. What caught my eye; as the title to this review states: Lester Ballard (Scott Haze) has the whitest teeth for a character who appears not to have bathed himself or changed his clothes in over a year. Not saying it isn't possible just seems highly unlikely the dude brushes his teeth once or twice a day, flosses etc., Perhaps it's just me, or not, haven't read but one other review and they didn't mention Ballard's clean shiney teeth. The last Franco film I saw was "The Institute" (2017). I hated it. Gave it a 1/10. It ripped off "The Wicker Man" from 1973 and pretty much used every female character as nothing but naked girls to whistle at. Idiotic. I did like "The Sound and The Fury" (2014), another difficult novel to make a film out of. What I know about the over 11,000 films and 10,000 TV shows (by episode) I have rated here is there has to be at least one character one attaches themselves to. Whether you have an emotional attachment or not is irrelevant; just need the attachment because it carries you along the story. Makes you pay attention to the little things; makes you wonder if you can relate in some way. Since Ballard is the one you mainly see in this, that's who we get to attach to.Ballard is an interesting character. I enjoyed the scene where he won the stuffed animals and then enjoyed the fireworks. There you see a sort of gentle side of Ballard. But we know he isn't right in the head and is prone to extreme violence. Mentally he's like a child but not stupid. When he finds the car with the two deceased young boy and girl who died from (more likely) exhaust fumes, at first (like a young pubescent boy) he fondles the girl, leaves, goes back and has sex with her dead body then leaves but leaving the vehicle like it was when he found it, but then he goes back and takes the girl to his shack. Child-like and definitely mentally disturbed.In the first hour of the film I always got the feeling that he wanted to be 'normal' like everyone else. Like when he buys a dress and makeup for the dead girl he's perpetually in a 'relationship' with. Don't know where he gets his money from, did wonder about that. Maybe his father left him some money before he died. Who knows. The film is actually quite slow in its telling. Not boring, just slow. When the shack caught on fire I did wonder if he would go back in and 'save' the dead girl. To his detriment: he did try to save her. It was sort of sad to see him there with just his stuffed tiger and bear watching the shack, his already dead girlfriend, and the other stuffed bear burn. I actually pitied him for a moment. When he shot his stuffed animals repeatedly while weeping and yelling at them, in that moment I felt he was schizophrenic. Then he became a murderer or more succinct: a serial killer. I think he became a murderer because only the dead or inanimate could love him, in his mind. It's hard to understand such people, I guess.

Scott Haze pulls off a strong lead performance as the highly disturbing loner Lester Ballard who lives his life based on his rules and not societies or any laws can convince him otherwise.He's a truly twisted character whom I doubt anyone can find likable and he has no regards for the living or the dead and early on we find out that he has an affection for killing animals.I will not go into details but he manages to do a lot of sick stuff through out the running time of the movie and at times it's a little hard to watch.If you're a sensitive soul know that this movie is rated R for a good reason, just within the first 10 minutes the lead is taking a crap (for real) visibly for the audience to see, never seen that before in a movie and hopefully this will be the last.Although I can't say I "liked it" I didn't dislike it either as it had it's moments and the performances were stellar and it did keep my interest so I give it a 6.Although it is on the slow side, compared to James Franco's previous directorial effort AS I LIE DYING it's really not and I found that one simply boring where as this managed to keep your interest at least.James Franco appears on the poster but I think that's more due to the fact he's directing and wrote the screenplay as he's only acting in it for 2 scenes.

James Franco seems to be trying to make a reputation for himself as a director who will tackle "classic novels" that were considered to be unfilmable, as he did with AS I LAY DYING. Let's say this about the Cormac McCarthy source novel, though. You will hear a lot of praise heaped upon it by the literary intellectuals. What you hear, though, is that the author has an original way with his prose, or that it's well known for a distinctive writing style that is missing common punctuation. What you don't usually hear is "this is a stunningly original and exciting story". It's the style that is praised more than the story.That has an obvious effect on this movie, then, as you cannot translate the prose to the screen (though Franco tries by injecting voice- overs and on screen text containing actual excerpts). What you are left with is a story that isn't all that exciting and has been done plenty of times. Yes, the necrophilia angle takes it further than most movies are willing to go, but in the end, this is just another Ed Gein influenced horror tales. What it desperately needed was to have something more happen in the actual events of the story. There is very little actual action and very little occurs in this movie. Prepare yourself to spend a great deal of the run time following our main character as he wanders around in the woods talking to himself.It is the main character and the acting by Scott Haze that is the central reason anyone would want to watch this movie. It is mainly a character study of one man, who we meet in the beginning clearly already suffering from mental illness. Through the course of the events of the story, we watch his mental health further degrade until he is little more than a primal animal, living in a cave and acting out his sexual deviances on whatever victims stumble his way. Haze does an excellent job of portraying this character, who mostly mumbles his way through the movie, putting the emphasis on Haze to portray the characters mental instability through his facial expression. The character could have become a cardboard cutout villain, but through the acting of Haze and some directing by Franco, the character definitely has his sympathetic moments where we feel for the situations that have put him down this course in life.Ultimately, though, I was just bored through most of the movie. I don't mind artistic. I don't mind low budget. I don't mind experimental. I am not someone who just doesn't have a tolerance for this style of film making. Instead, the only real action is a botched lynching that he escapes from far too conveniently. I just kept waiting for something to happen and it never did, including a huge letdown ending.