My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010) is a crime thriller from Werner Herzog you can watch online on iFILM. The film was produced by David Lynch — a pairing that tells you immediately this won't operate by conventional rules. Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloë Sevigny, Brad Dourif and Udo Kier star in this German-American co-production drawn from a real San Diego murder case.

Brad has killed his mother and barricaded himself inside his house with hostages, shouting about God, a trip to Peru and pizza. Detective Havenhurst, played by Dafoe, works the perimeter and interviews Brad's fiancée (Sevigny), his neighbors and his friends, assembling the strange trail of choices that led a seemingly ordinary young man here. Shannon plays Brad not as a maniac but as someone for whom the line between stage performance and lived reality simply dissolved — which is far more unsettling than a straightforward breakdown.

Herzog isn't interested in explaining what happened or providing any psychological resolution. He plants the camera at an oblique angle to the events and lets the discomfort accumulate. It's a film that refuses the catharsis a thriller usually offers. Stream My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010) online on iFILM.