Brad did it. He killed his mother. In the neighbor's living room. With the antique sword.

No, I didn't just spoil the film for you, this is how the story begins. You know who did it, who's dead, and where it happened. You see the body, the murder weapon, but what you don't know is why it happened. Why did Brad (Shannon) kill his mother? Was it her overbearing nature? Was it her bizarro-attentiveness to his every need? Was it her obsession with the flamingos and flamingo decor? Or did Brad like the flamingos? Who knows?

What I do know is that "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" has a great cast: Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Udo Kier, and Michael Shannon, and they do a phenomenal job with the uber-creepy plot and oddly-calm murder that is in question. No one knows what made Brad snap. Neither his fiance, Ingrid (Sevigny) nor his good friend Lee (Kier) knows exactly what happened to him after his trip to Peru. The only thing they know is that his is very strange and has become incredibly religious. Couple that with a bizarre fascination that he is living the same life as the character he portrays in a play,  and you have just plain weird. Willem Dafoe is Detective Hank Havenhurst whose job it is to figure out what really happened and why, but only with the help of Ingrid and Lee.

Werner Herzog, director, tells the eerily-loosely-based story of a son who kills his mother after being cast in a Greek play. While the names and details of the story are supposed to be fictional they ring true of the 1979 Mark Yavorsky incident in San Diego. The then 34 year-old former basketball star found himself at the center of a Greek play and then killed his mother in a neighbor's house with an antique sword. Oh, did I mention that the movie was filmed very nearly where the actual incident took place? Coincidence? I don't think so.

At any rate, Herzog tells the story in a non-linear flashback-type format that eventually pieces together all the steps that lead up to the murder. The sets and imagery are striking and only lend to the weirdness of the experience. It's no doubt that David Lynch signed on to produce the film even though he wouldn't agree to it when it was conceived in 1995. That's right, the audience is watching a film that has been waiting to be made for almost 15 years. Herzog even plays with life as still life a few times in the film. The actors are not paused or frozen, but they hold very still for serveral minutes while the camera pans in to study their expressions. Perhaps the technique is employed to signify the stillness of the moment or the calm before the storm that is to come? I'm not sure, but it is very Lynch-like. Michael Shannon is very good at this, by the way.

"My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?" is the thinking man's horror movie; no gratuitous blood or gore, just un certainty and real fear. The way horror was intended.