My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Reviews Counted: 40
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 20
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Critic Reviews: 12
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 6
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 3,027
My Rating
Movie Info
The first collaboration between legendary filmmakers David Lynch and Werner Herzog, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is loosely based on the true story of a San Diego man whose mystifying experiences lead him to commit a shocking act of matricide. Michael Shannon, Chloë Sevigny, and Willem Dafoe headline this psychological thriller written and directed by Herzog, produced by Lynch, and featuring Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier, and Brad Dourif. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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Cast
-
Michael Shannon
Brad McCullum -
Chloë Sevigny
Ingrid -
Willem Dafoe
Detective Hank Havenhur... -
Grace Zabriskie
Mrs. McCullum -
Udo Kier
Lee Meyers -
Brad Dourif
Uncle Ted -
Michael Peña
Detective Vargas -
-
Verne Troyer
Midget -
Loretta Devine
Miss Roberts
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All Critics (40) | Top Critics (12) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (20) | DVD (8)
What they deliver is the sort of fake mysticism that usually ensues when secular intellectuals try to plumb the depths of religious faith.
My Son, My Son... may be a minor work in the Herzog canon but it's still one of the more fascinating, frustrating, disturbing and beautiful experiences available to cinemagoers this year.
One of Herzog's quirky misfires.
Confounds all convention and denies all expected pleasures, providing instead the delight of watching Herzog feed the police hostage formula into the Mixmaster of his imagination.
Lynch and Herzog have tickled us for years with their dwarves and iguanas and impenetrable stories. This collaboration represents the vanishing point of willful obscurity.
As a writer-director with five decades' worth of notable screen work to his credit, [Herzog] certainly can't be faulted for taking risks, even if it means now and then, well, falling on his sword.
The version of madness displayed by [Michael Shannon's] Brad is not typically dramatic; it's mostly just strange, and dances the line bordering on goofiness.
More like a bad dream than a good film.
It is a film that addresses itself directly to the audience of Lynch and Herzog, and sets out, in its own special way, to "razzle them, dazzle them, razzle dazzle them."
It's like Psycho remade by Ed Wood.
Oddly understated, it's nevertheless as unnerving a vision of disintegration in suburbia as you'd expect from director Werner Herzog and producer David Lynch.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done finds God in a cereal box and Satan on an ostrich farm.
Unsettling but in a good way.
The nods to Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo won't go unnoticed, but the more obtuse touches that bear the stamp of executive producer David Lynch may prove too eclectically eccentric.
This is a must for Herzog and Lynch fans.
Like many of the characters, the plot is under-developed yet My Son, My Son lingers in the brain and is essential viewing for Herzog and Lynch fans alike.
Enjoyably weird thriller that's a treat for fans of both Herzog and Lynch, with a superb script and great performances from a terrific ensemble cast.
A clash between mental deterioration and confrontational cinema, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done lunges into the fragmented abyss of a murderous lost soul attempting to craft his own personalized religious awakening.
Both baffling and mystifying, the film details a descent into madness with God in a boombox, worshipped oatmeal boxes, and the designated lunatic's proclaimed mantra, minus reference to any white whale though flamingos may be implicated, as Call Me Farouk
With David Lynch and Werner Herzog involved it's just as elliptical and twisted as you might expect.
Directed and co-written by Herzog (with Herbert Golder) and executive produced by Lynch,[the film] offers a whiff of originality in a sea of cinema schlock. But compared to both filmmakers' prior works, it's nowhere near as memorable.
A film that gets increasingly under our skin as it goes along, tying up loose ends along the way while leaving other things maddeningly out of reach
This is Herzog pursuing ideas that fascinate him almost without recourse to whether or not they "work"... wildly interesting, almost too interesting to handle.
Audience Reviews for My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Super Reviewer
Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon) is a strange young man living in San Diego. One day, unexpectedly, he kills his mother with a sword and locks himself away in his home, claiming to have hostages. Detectives Havenhurst (Willem Dafoe) and Vargas (Michael Pena) arrive on the scene to get to the bottom of Brad's seemingly sudden act of lunacy.
As this film opens it's apparent, early on, that it's going to go in a different direction. The use of music is eerie and the behaviour of the characters very off-key but then that's entirely expected when David Lynch's name appears on the opening credits. It even has a few of Lynch's regular cast members in Dafoe, Brad Dourif and Grace Zabriskie but the most apparent thing that separates this from Lynch's efforts is the absence of haunting composer Angelo Badalamenti. Without him, it's just not the same. There are several moments to be admired and those moments are mainly fashioned with a Lynchian wierdness but it's an ability that Herzog just can't get a handle on here. Even though Lynch is weird, he is never boring but Herzog certainly comes across this way. Despite it's intriguing atmosphere and sense of mystery, I found myself losing interest and losing it rapidly. The performances - as expected - are great and Michael Shannon adds another intense and off-beat character to his resumà (C) but the tone and poor script let down any impressive work delivered onscreen. In fact, if it wasn't for the reliable cast, I'd rate this even lower than I have. As an exploration of mental health culminating into Greek tragedy, it's ambitious but the sheer strangeness of it all just falls flat.
In the same year, Herzog released "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" which was an another exploration of one man's insanity but as impressive as that was, he doesn't achieve the same balance with this one. I always knew I was taking a chance going into this but I really didn't expect it to be as bad as it turned out to be. I held onto the fact that this it may have been misunderstood but I was, sadly, mistaken.
As the old proverb goes... 'too many cooks spoil the broth'; this might have worked better had either Lynch or, especially, Herzog had a clearer idea of what they were delivering.
On this occasion I'll be changing Werner's name to 'Herz-slog'. What he was formulating, I was receiving on a badly tuned frequency.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Hijo mío, hijo mío, ¿qué has hecho? (ES)





Top Critic
The film is loosely based on an actual event, and involves an young actor who, obsessed with a Greek tragedy he's rehearsing, kills his mother with an antique sword. So, since everyone knows who did it, the investigation of the case is based around why he did it.
Given who's involved here, that obviously means that this film is offbeat and takes an unconventional approach. When the film begins, the crime has already happened, so the film alternates between flashbacks leading up to the crime, and the investigation itself. It's sort of a horror movie, but it's more about tone, mood, and atmosphere, and the psychology of things instead of focusing on the bloodshed.
There have been plenty of films already that have done the whole descent into madness thing so well that there's no real point in trying to top those or add to that collection, so here it is a case of, "we've got a crazy guy, let's just film something about him". In a way, that's cool, and kinda works. It doesn't really lead up to much though, and I never felt like I got much of a point here, but there were some high points along the way at least.
The pairing of Herzog and Lynch is awesome, so it sucks that the result wasn't spectacular. There's a great cast of character players here, all fitting perfectly with the vibe common to H and L's typical works. The performances are pretty damn good, save for Sevigny who just kinda seems ot be spaced out and phoning it in. The music is great however, and the cinematography is also pretty sweet.
The film has a great, creepy vibe to it, and it's a nice reminder of how these two directors can take seemingly normal places and warp them. Too bad the overall result is meandering, ponderous, and a tad too slow in the pacing department.
Look, I like parts of this, a lot, but it's just a bit unfulfilling when it shouldn't be. Maybe I missed the point. All I know is that if you like either director, you are bound to find at least something to like, even if it isn't everything.