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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
