Werner Herzog and David Lynch are high priests of perversity, canny eccentrics who enjoy entwining the lyrical and lurid. How fitting that they’ve hooked up — Lynch executive-produced, Herzog directs.
Cat-faced Twin Peaks veteran Grace Zabriskie plays a kookily oppressive mom who is slain by her barmy actor son Brad (Michael Shannon) with a sword he’s been using for a staging of Oresteia. As the police set up camp outside Brad’s San Diego home, the police chief (Willem Dafoe) obsesses about coffee, sounding just like Twin Peaks’ Dale Cooper. Herzog seems determined to place himself in Lynch’s shadow, perhaps hoping to offer two shots of darkness for the price of one.
Every scene involving mother and son is wonderfully claustrophobic. The trouble is, fraught mother and son combos are not exactly rare (Savage Grace explored similar territory only last year) and, when the film tries to widen its focus, it feels flimsy. As Brad’s fiancée, Ingrid, Chloë Sevigny gets to wear tiny shorts and frown a lot. She’s basically playing "the concerned girlfriend", a non-part. Brad Dourif, meanwhile, is typecast as a crazy redneck.
The script is loosely based on a true crime yet never resembles real life. It’s as if Herzog has taken too many liberties. Or perhaps not enough. And we’re so used to his heightened, animal-centric visuals that even the freakish flamingos fail to shock. All in all, a storm in a coffee cup.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Cert: 15
