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By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’m going to tell you something that every single parent will tell you with varying degrees of seriousness: kids are evil. They just are, and most of the time, it’s not even their fault.
Do you know why kids are sometimes evil? It’s because they’re still figuring stuff out. In most cases, your kid engages in behavior that’s universally considered “bad,” and it’s up to you to help them develop their conscience because they don’t know what they don’t know. They’re learning the hard way on the schoolyard when they say something out of pocket and get in trouble, or get into a physical scuffle because they don’t yet know how to regulate their emotions.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, this is normal behavior. Most kids learn the difference between right and wrong, and they become conscientious, thoughtful little human beings with minds of their own that you can actually trust. This is not the case in 1993’s The Good Sonwhere Macaulay Culkin is a straight-up psychopath of a 10-year-old, and there’s no conventional way to reach him before he does something unforgivable.
The most apt modern comparison to The Good Son is 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. In that film, a mother is certain that her child is a danger to himself and those around him, but nobody believes her until it’s far too late. The Good Son is equally unnerving because its protagonist is just a child himself, living with his extended family during winter break, realizing that his cousin is a serial killer waiting for his awakening, and having nobody to confide in about it.
It’s like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” but there was a wolf all along, and nobody in the family of sheep sees the threat for what it truly is.
Insane Chemistry From Our Young Leads
These days, Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood can do literally whatever they want, and I’ll put Daniel Radcliffe into this conversation too while I’m at it. They paid their dues when they were just children, and now they’re free to star in whatever gonzo, low-budget projects they feel like attaching their names to. If there’s any doubt in your mind that Culkin and Wood aren’t high-caliber actors because you’re not a fan of the Home Alone or Lord of the Rings films, The Good Son is all the proof you’ll ever need. Not only are they individually excellent, but their chemistry as young collaborators carries a project that is very much not kid-friendly.
The Good Son centers on 10-year-old Mark Evans (Elijah Wood), who’s sent by his widowed father, Jack (David Morse), to live with his extended family during winter break while he’s away on the final business trip that will provide enough financial stability to step up and be a proper father figure during his son’s time of need.
Things are pretty normal at first. Mark is naturally broken up by his mother’s death, but he finds a fast friend in Henry (Macaulay Culkin), his same-age cousin who loves doing what most boys love to do when unsupervised: playing in his tree house, throwing rocks through abandoned warehouse windows, and shooting neighborhood dogs dead with a custom-made bolt-shooting device …
Early on, there’s some plausible deniability to consider. Maybe Henry was trying to scare the dog and accidentally shot it. Maybe it was his intention all along. What happens immediately afterward, if you didn’t think this was a red flag already, should be the smoking gun that lets you know the boy should get locked up for life.
Mark, clearly disturbed by the fact that Henry just murdered a dog, is made even more uncomfortable by how nonchalant and remorseless his cousin is. The boy just goes about his day as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Escalations Only Mark Can See
While most young-adult-themed thrillers rely on incompetent adults, The Good Son does a great job toeing the line. Henry is a little spawn of Satan, yes, but he’s also wise beyond his years when it comes to manipulating his family. They only see him as somebody who’s helping break Mark out of his shell and grieve the loss of his mother.
The second there are no adults present, he shifts from caring to cruel, often making horrible jokes about Mark’s mother while alluding to the fact that he may have been responsible for the death of his youngest brother, Richard, who drowned in the bathtub under suspicious circumstances the previous year.
Henry’s mother and father, Susan (Wendy Crewson) and Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly), are present enough that you never really question their parenting. By all measures, they’re wonderful people, making sure that Henry and Mark are taken care of, along with their daughter, Connie (Quinn Culkin). They’re simply no match for Henry, who causes multiple car pileups with his “pranks” and suggests that he’s willing to kill again if Mark gets in the way of his perfect relationships with his family members.
While young Elijah Wood’s horrified facial expressions are enough to steal the show, they thrive in this capacity because of Macaulay Culkin’s menacing performance as one of the most unhinged child psychopaths ever given a wide release. His self-assured smirks after committing multiple crimes against humanity are enough to make your skin crawl.
What’s most perplexing to me is how poorly this film performed with critics, as it currently sits at an abysmal 26 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Most of the criticism stems from Culkin being cast against type at the height of his movie-star career, but he’s beyond solid here, even if we were only used to seeing him in family comedies up to this point. I’d even say his performance gives Ezra Miller’s turn in We Need to Talk About Kevin a run for its money. It’s genuinely unpleasant, and it doesn’t feel phoned in. It feels like it’s coming from a dark place, especially considering the actor was only 13 when the film was released.
The Good Sonwhile occasionally suffering from the kinds of tropes you’d expect from a widely released psychological thriller of this era (they always go way too dramatic with the film score), is a cut above its contemporaries and a grossly underappreciated film for its time. Now that it’s streaming on Netflix, you can give it a second chance if you want to see Kevin McCallister really go nuts on some unsuspecting victims.
