The Good Son (film)

The Good Son is a 1993 American psychological thriller film directed by Joseph Ruben, produced and released by 20th Century Fox. It was written by English novelist Ian McEwan. Its story follows a 10-year-old boy named Mark Evans who, after the death of his mother, is sent to stay with his aunt and uncle while his father is away on a business trip. While there, Mark meets his cousin Henry, who shows signs of violent and evil behavior. The film stars Macaulay Culkin, Elijah Wood, Wendy Crewson, David Morse, Daniel Hugh Kelly, and Jacqueline Brookes.

The film was produced by Joseph Ruben and Mary Ann Page and was released on September 24, 1993. It grossed $12.5 million during its opening weekend and $60.6 million worldwide against a budget of $17 million. McEwan was optimistic about the project and by November 1991, sets were being built in Maine for a production that would cost approximately $12 million. This progress was suddenly interrupted when Kit Culkin, Macaulay Culkin's father and manager, at the time a notoriously influential force in Hollywood due to the child's stardom, wanted his son to star in the film. Wishing to prove Macaulay's capacity in a dark role, he made his son's part in The Good Son a condition for his appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Fox agreed enthusiastically due to Culkin's bankability.

Principal photography took place between November 1992 and February 1993. It proved successful in the home video market, finishing in the top 30 video rentals of 1994 in the United States. A DVD of the film was released on September 11, 2012. A Blu-ray release of The Good Son was announced on October 25, 2016 and was released on August 1, 2017.

Elmer Bernstein's score to The Good Son was released in 1993 by Fox Music. Recorded at Paramount Studios in California in August 1993, the score was orchestrated by Emilie A. Bernstein and Patrick Russ, and featured Cynthia Millar on ondes martenot.

A tie-in novel was published alongside the movie's release in 1993, written by Todd Strasser. The novel elaborates on the movie, detailing how Henry was born a sociopath, rather than being some personification of evil. In the novel, Henry's mother Susan eventually discovers that Henry is unable to understand emotions like love and sorrow, and that pleasure derived from selfish actions and the torment of others are the few things he truly feels. The book also concludes differently from the movie, ending with Mark returning to Uncle Wallace's home in Maine one year later. Mark and Susan visit Henry's grave, which includes an epitaph: "Without Darkness There Can Be No Light".

British release

In the United Kingdom, The Good Son was postponed for cinema release in light of sensitives following the murder of James Bulger in February 1993, due to their perceived similarities. It was one of several films depicting child killers to be caught up in controversy following the case, alongside Child's Play 3 (1991) and the banned Mikey (1992). As the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) commented in their annual report, films about wicked children had become a problem for classification, with The Good Son attracting notoriety as "a child murderer played by the world's most popular child star was bound to attract media attention", though they noted its moral centre. The Good Son was rated 18 without cuts for cinema release by the BBFC, citing its strong violence and threat,

The film was finally released in the UK in 1995 as a video release, but it received 33 seconds of cuts to remove part of the car pileup scene, as it was felt the possibility that such a scene would be copied by mischievous children was too great.

Reception

Box office

The Good Son earned 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.

Critics

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film had an approval rating of 25% based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's consensus stated: "The Good Son is never good enough to live up to its unsettling potential, failing to drum up much suspense and unable to make Macaulay Culkin a credible psychopath." On Metacritic, the film had a weighted average score of 45 out of 100 based on 17 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert, who deemed the film inappropriate for children, awarded it half a star, calling the project a "creepy, unpleasant experience". He and Gene Siskel later gave it "Two Thumbs Down". Many critics criticized the casting of Culkin because of his comedic image from Home Alone. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post stated that "the mere presence of the adorable boy star... seems to throw the whole film out of whack, making the picture play more like an inadvertent comedy than a thriller." Janet Maslin in The New York Times wrote that the end sequence at the cliff "is one of its few suspenseful and original moments" and "is quite literally gripping."

Paul Willinstein of The Morning Call described the film as "Home Alone meets Misery meets The Hand That Rocks the Cradle."

Accolades

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders sortable"

! scope="col" | Award

! scope="col" | Category

! scope="col" | Recipient

! scope="col" | Result

! scope="col"! class="unsortable"|

|MTV Movie Awards

|Best Villain

|Macaulay Culkin

|rowspan="3"|

| rowspan="2"| Saturn Awards

|Best Horror Film

|The Good Son

|Best Performance by a Younger Actor

|Elijah Wood

Henry Evans was included in The Guardians 2014 list of "The 10 best fictional evil children".

Analysis

John Kenneth Muir in Horror Films of the 1990s wrote that the main difference between this and The Bad Seed was that the mother character manages to put an end to Henry's misconduct, while in the latter the mother is unable to stop Rhoda Penmark.