The movie has a harsh, dreamlike look and ends up as another, rather minor, example of the director's studies in obsession.
The experience is rather like watching a low-rent TV movie while dosed up on heavy medication.
Worth catching.
The ungainly shift between present and past, the muted playing, bizarre incidental music and sudden lurches into foreign location work bear the hallmarks of Herzogian oddity, but offer little in terms of pleasure or plausibility.
There are a few dark laughs to be had and a certain pungent underlying perversity makes sure it is memorable for sure.
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.
It's a typically Herzogian tale of descent into madness.
If anyone other than Werner Herzog and David Lynch had directed and produced this story of a man (Michael Shannon, right) who kills his mother then holes up with two hostages, it might have been just another crime drama, based on a true story.
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, two of the movies’ most brilliantly demented visionaries.
General release. Check local listings for show times.