The Good Son (film)

The Good Son
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Joseph Ruben
Written by	Ian McEwan
Produced by	Joseph Ruben Mary Ann Page
Starring	Macaulay Culkin Elijah Wood Wendy Crewson David Morse
Cinematography	John Lindley
Edited by	George Bowers
Music by	Elmer Bernstein
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	September 24, 1993 (1993-09-24)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$17 million
Box office	$60,613,008

The Good Son is a 1993 American psychological thriller film directed by Joseph Ruben and written by English novelist Ian McEwan. The film stars Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood.

Plot

In Arizona, 12-year-old Mark Evans (Elijah Wood) is playing a soccer game, until his father Jack (David Morse) appears and takes him to the hospital to visit his dying mother, Janice. After her death, Jack tries to console his son, but to no avail as Mark maintains the belief that his mother will return. Having been assigned for a business trip to Tokyo, Japan, Jack takes Mark to stay with his brother Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and sister-in-law Susan (Wendy Crewson). Upon reaching the Evans' house in Maine, Mark is re-introduced to his extended family, including his cousins Connie (Quinn Culkin) and Henry (Macaulay Culkin). Mark and Henry get along at first, and Henry seems to be nice and well-mannered. In discussing the death of Mark's mother and that of Henry's baby brother Richard, however, Henry expresses an abnormal fascination with death, making Mark uneasy.

Henry continues to display increasingly psychopathic behavior, using a homemade crossbow to kill a neighbor's dog and cheerfully dropping a dummy he dubbed "Mr. Highway" onto a local highway, causing a pileup. Although nobody is killed in the crashes, or even seriously injured, Mark is horrified at Henry's actions and tries to tell Wallace. Henry drives him away, threatening to 'reveal' that causing the crash was actually Mark's idea.

Later on, Henry implies that he will try to kill his sister. When Susan and Wallace go out to dinner, the boys babysit Connie and play hide and seek with the power off. Mark is terrified something will happen to Connie, but finds her. He then spends the night in her room.

The next morning, Mark awakens to find Henry has taken Connie ice skating. Mark runs the pond where Henry purposely shoves his sister toward the thin ice. The ice collapses and Connie falls in the icy water, nearly drowning before she is rescued by two passersby and taken to the hospital. Mark again attempts to tell Susan the situation, but he is immediately dismissed as lying. Susan becomes skeptical of Henry, however, when he visits Connie's room, planning to smother her, but Susan, sitting in the dark, interrupts him. Susan then finds a rubber duck in Henry's shed. It had once belonged to Richard and was with him in the bathtub the night he drowned, after which it went missing. When Susan confronts Henry, he quickly becomes furious, insisting that the duck was his before it was Richard's. When Henry asks for it back, Susan refuses and he gets aggressive and snatches the duck back. Henry then throws it down the well, where he and Mark dumped the dog's carcass, indicating Richard meant nothing to him.

Mark phones his father and informs him of the situation and Henry's increasing psychopathic acts. Jack is also somewhat dismissive and tells Mark he'll be home soon. In the meantime, he tells Mark to go to Dr. Alice Davenport, the local psychologist, and tell her of the situation. However, when he arrives he finds that Henry is already there twisting the situation to make it look like Mark is the one committing the psychopathic acts.

After Mark tells Henry that "Susan's my mother now", Henry indirectly implies that he will kill Susan. In a fit of rage, Mark grabs a pair of scissors and jumps on Henry, pressing them to Henry's neck. As Henry arrogantly eggs Mark on to kill him, Wallace enters the room. Seeing Mark about to kill Henry, Wallace locks Mark in the den to await Alice. Meanwhile, a suspicious Susan arrives and goes on a walk with Henry. Mark escapes the den and chases after them.

Susan confronts Henry about Richard's death and asks Henry firmly if he murdered his brother, to which he implies that he did. Horrified of what her son has become, Susan tells Henry that he needs help. He then runs off into the woods in fear of being committed to a psychiatric hospital. Susan chases him, afraid he will try to kill himself. She arrives at a cliff, which leads her to believe Henry has jumped into the water below. Henry suddenly appears behind her, amused at having fooled his mother yet again, and shoves Susan off the cliff. She narrowly catches a branch on the way down and holds on, while Henry picks up a large rock which he intends to throw down at her. As he prepares to throw it, Mark arrives and tackles his cousin, and they fight while Susan tries climbing back on to the ledge. In the ensuing brawl, the boys roll off the edge of the cliff, and are caught by Susan after climbing back up to the ledge. She arduously hangs on to each boy with one hand. Henry holds on with both his hands, but Mark's one-handed grip of Susan's bloody hand is slipping.

Wanting to save them both, and yet understanding she can save only one of them, Henry tries to force Susan to bring him her other hand so that he would complete his goal, while Mark tries to warn her that Henry will kill her and the rest of his family so that he can get his revenge. Seeing Mark's way of telling the truth and forgiving him, she makes the painful decision to let go of Henry thus dropping him to his death to protect her family and to rescue Mark. She pulls him up, and they both look down to see Henry's dead body on the rocks below, which is washed away into the sea. Susan and Mark then share an emotional embrace as Mark saved his family from being killed.

When Mark returns to Arizona, he goes to a large rocky hill in order to be alone with his thoughts. He wonders about Susan and if she would again make the same choice to save him instead of Henry.

Cast

• Elijah Wood as Mark Evans, the protagonist of the film. The death of his mother is what causes him to be left with his relatives in Maine. He is also the first to learn about Henry's wickedness.
• Macaulay Culkin as Henry Evans, the main antagonist of the film. His goal is to kill his own family who gets in his way. At one point, he plans to kill his mother so he won't be sent to a reformatory.
• Wendy Crewson as Susan Evans, the deuteragonist of the film. At first, she doesn't believe Mark when he tries to tell her about how bad Henry is.
• David Morse as Jack Evans, Mark's father.
• Daniel Hugh Kelly as Wallace Evans, Henry's father and Jack's brother.
• Jacqueline Brookes as Alice Davenport.
• Quinn Kay Culkin as Connie Evans.
• Rory Culkin as Richard Evans (in picture).

Reception

The film received a mostly negative response from critics, with a 25% overall score on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert, who deemed the film inappropriate for children, awarded it just half a star, calling the project a "creepy, unpleasant experience". He and Gene Siskel later gave it "Two Thumbs Down".

"Here you have America's favorite kid throwing a dummy off of a little bridge over a roadway, causing an accident. That scares me. I think it's highly irresponsible to show a youngster doing something like that. I think if kids go see the picture, some are likely to imitate it." Gene Siskel interview on ABC News.

The Good Son received US$44,789,789 at the North American box office revenues, and another $15,823,219 in other territories, for a total worldwide box office take of $60,613,008.

Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin's performances were well-received, however. Wood won Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Young Actor, while Culkin was nominated for an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain.

External links

• The Good Son at IMDb
• The Good Son at AllMovie