#338: The Good Son

Release Date: September 24th, 1993

Format: Streaming (Netflix)

Written by: Ian McEwan

Directed by: Joseph Ruben

3 Stars

The Good Son arrived with lots of baggage when it debuted in theaters in the fall of 1993. Not only was it the first non-Home Alone starring role for young Macaulay Culkin, the biggest child star of his generation, but it attempted to turn him into something that he’s not: a real actor. 

And not only a real actor, but an actor that can play against type and carry a movie with a big performance. That’s a lot to ask for from a child performer who to that point only played supporting roles as a tow-headed rascal. Sure, Culkin was a cute scene partner in Home Alone and Uncle Buck, but it was comic heavyweights like Catherine O’Hara and John Candy who were doing most of the heavy lifting in those films.

Culkin’s miscasting in The Good Son doesn’t ruin the movie, but it did signal to American audiences that the kid didn’t have it. He’s not believably menacing, despite a competent script from English screenwriter Ian McWean, and it doesn’t help that while watching The Good Son, it’s immediately apparent that his similarly aged co-star, Elijah Wood, is a more flexible and talented performer. Wood conveys such varied emotions as playfulness, depression, and dread; Culkin seems stuck in first gear in comparison.

As for the film’s plot, it involves ten-year-old Mark (Wood) moving in with his uncle’s family in coastal Maine after the death of his mother. Mark’s father, Jack (David Morse), is traveling to Tokyo for business and he and his brother think that a change of scenery might be just what Mark needs. Once in Maine, Mark meets his uncle’s wife, Susan (Wendy Crewson), and his two cousins, ten-year-old Henry (Culkin) and six-year-old Connie (Quinn Culkin, Macaulay’s real-life sister). The boys Mark and Henry hit it off immediately, until Mark begins to notice some of Henry’s increasingly disturbing and eventually deadly behaviors. The climax of the movie involves a frantic Mark desperately trying to convince his aunt that Henry is a murderous psychopath and a danger to anybody who crosses his path.

Director Joseph Ruben (The Stepfather (#317), Sleeping with the Enemy) specializes in this exact type of suburban psychopath-on-the-loose storytelling and does a commendable job with The Good Son. It’s an entertaining movie, even if Culkin’s casting limits him from embracing the film’s true spirit as an exploitation shocker. Watch Terry O’Quinn chewing up in the scenery in The Stepfather and then Culkin in The Good Son and you’ll see how Ruben’s hands were a bit tied in what he could do with the latter movie.

Now I’m sounding overly harsh about a movie that I actually enjoyed watching. There is a lot to like about The Good Son, despite its notoriety and the unfair expectation it placed on its young leading actor.