Even as an MFA thesis project, it would get a C-.
It is just too pretentious, talkative, vain. I understand what they were trying to do. It was an attempt at a Herzog treatment of a Friedkin leftover. But that still didn't remove the pointlessness of it.
If the fourth wall stuff had been more poignant, it might have worked but that was as dull as a DVD extra. The actual re-creation of the forty minutes was just a bad performance art piece of wanton looks and gay sex. Had they revealed something in the scenes about the original movie - like a casual hint as to why the "killer" never had a fixed physical appearance, or that famous faces that had to be edited out, or something else about Steve Burns's sexuality. Something. Then I might have cared. But this whole thing came across as even more exploitative that the original was perceived to be,
And it was done merely for its own sake.
Seems Franco just heard that there was missing footage of gay sex and just replaced it....with footage...of gay sex. But he did nothing clever with the mysterious nature of the cuts.