Werner Herzog and David Lynch walk into a bar. One mumbles about existential dread and flamingos. The other lights the jukebox on fire. The bartender asks what they’re drinking. They both respond, “Yes.”
This is the energy that births My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, a 2009 collaboration between Herzog (directing) and Lynch (producing) that promises to be a psychotic opera of Greek tragedy, mental breakdowns, and kitchen cutlery. What we get instead is a telenovela shot like a community access police procedural, starring Michael Shannon as a man who walks like he’s hiding a ferret in his pants and talks like he’s been possessed by the ghost of a confused pirate.
It is, quite frankly, not good. And not in the fun, campy way. It’s like watching a haunted VHS tape slowly eat itself while the cast reads lines they found in a fortune cookie.
🔪 Based on a True Story, Loosely, Lazily
Let’s start with the “based on true events” angle. Yes, the film is inspired by the bizarre 1979 murder of a San Diego woman by her son, an amateur actor obsessed with Greek tragedy. But Herzog doesn’t tell that story. He licks it, sniffs it, and wanders off muttering about flamingos and oatmeal.
This is less a dramatization than a disassociation.
🎭 Michael Shannon: The Stare That Launched a Thousand Rewrites
Michael Shannon plays Brad McCullum, a man who may or may not be losing his mind, depending on whether or not you interpret his dinner monologues as the ravings of a madman or just an actor rehearsing for a bad off-Broadway job. He’s the kind of guy who can make the phrase “I saw God’s shadow in the microwave” sound like a line from a church pamphlet or a suicide note. Sometimes both.
His performance is pure Shannon: tightly coiled, muttering, unpredictable. He delivers every line like he’s about to either propose marriage or punch a goose. And yet somehow, he’s still the least strange thing in this movie.
🕵️♂️ The Cop Show Nobody Ordered
The film’s structure plays out like a confused episode of Law & Order: Existential Dread Unit. Willem Dafoe and Michael Peña show up as detectives, and you think, “Okay, they’ll ground this in some kind of narrative.” Nope. They mostly stand around, ask intentionally obtuse questions, and sip coffee like they’re in purgatory’s break room.
Their dialogue is so wooden you half expect them to get splinters. Example:
Detective: “So he said something about the eye of the universe?”
Other Detective: “Mmm. The eye. Sounds… Greek.”
Pulitzer-winning stuff.
🌴 Flamingos, Oatmeal, and Existential Staring Contests
There are flamingos in this film. They are not explained. They simply exist, watching silently, as if they know this movie will eventually be used by acting students as an example of “choices not to make.” At one point, Shannon’s character scolds someone for putting too much water in the oatmeal. Later, he prays next to a dying tree.
I’m not making this up. This is what happens. And Herzog shoots it all like he’s filming a nature documentary about confused humans trying to reenact their dreams.
Every room is beige. Every face is blank. Every shot lingers five seconds too long, like the camera forgot to cut and is now just waiting for death.
💔 The Romance That Makes You Hate Love
Chloë Sevigny plays Brad’s fiancée, a woman so committed to emotional repression she makes Queen Elizabeth look like a TikTok influencer. She stands in rooms, says things like “I love him but he’s… different,” and looks like she’s constantly trying to remember if she left the oven on.
Their romance is less chemistry and more shared trauma. You don’t root for them. You want them both to join separate monasteries and never speak again.
🎞️ Cinematography by IKEA
The movie looks like it was shot on a security camera from 1998. Interiors are lit like dentist offices. Exteriors look like the cameraman gave up and let the sun do all the work. There are no flourishes, no visual poetry, just long, awkward takes of actors wandering around looking like they’re searching for craft services.
At times you wonder if the film is making fun of itself. Then you remember it’s Herzog and Lynch. They don’t do jokes. They do intentions.
🧠 The Dialogue: Poetry Slam in a Coma Ward
Lines in this film include:
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“I heard voices. They said, ‘Do it. The eye is watching.’”
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“I’m not mad. The world is mad. I’m the only one who’s free.”
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“She put too much water in the oatmeal!”
It’s the kind of writing that sounds deep until you say it out loud and realize it’s gibberish wearing a trench coat. You don’t get swept away by the drama—you get held hostage by it.
🧾 Final Thoughts: Herzog and Lynch Need a Timeout
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is not a film. It’s a test. A test of patience. Of endurance. Of whether or not you can listen to Michael Shannon rant about flamingos for 90 minutes without trying to bite your television.
It wants to be psychological horror. It ends up as a glitchy voicemail from two auteurs too far up their own mythologies to realize no one’s listening anymore. It’s like being trapped in a dream where your weirdest cousin directs a community theater version of Oedipus Rex with no budget and no script.
Herzog’s voice is missing. Lynch’s fingerprints are smudged. What’s left is cinematic soup—lumpy, lukewarm, and accidentally vegan.
Rating: 1 out of 5 spiritually bankrupt flamingos
Because the only crime worse than matricide is making Willem Dafoe wear a necktie for no reason.
