Directed by: Joseph Ruben
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Elijah Wood, Wendy Crewson, Daniel Hugh Kelly
Macaulay Culkin plays Henry, a ten-year old serial killer in The Good Son, which is your type of movie if you are interested in seeing Culkin play such a character. Until The Good Son, Macaulay Culkin played lovable, inquisitive kids like the one in Home Alone, in which he tormented home invaders by laying booby traps made from household items. In this movie, Culkin plays another child who ingeniously sets traps for others to fall into, but with much more malice aforethought. He's not defending his home, he's simply homicidal.
The hero of The Good Son is Mark (Wood), a child around Henry's age who recently lost his mother and now must stay with his cousin Henry's family in Maine while his father travels for business. Henry's home is near cliffs, so you know darn well those cliffs will figure heavily into the plot later on. Before that, Mark and Henry adventurously run around the island where they engage at first in playful mischief, but Mark soon notices that Henry's idea of pranks are on the deadly side, such as dropping a mannequin off an overpass into traffic causing a ten-car collision. Mark tries to tell Henry's family, who of course tend to think Mark is overreacting. Oh, and Henry's brother recently drowned and perhaps his sister is his next target unless Mark can stop him.
It took some nerve for Culkin to play against type even at his young age, but once the perverse fascination of seeing the young actor who played Kevin McAllister now playing a budding serial killer passes, then we're left with a movie with all of the cliches of a slasher movie with kids playing the adult roles. And then we have the ending in which Henry's mom is hanging on to both Mark and Henry while they both dangle over the cliff. She doesn't have enough strength to hold both kids, so like Sophie's Choice, the poor woman must sacrifice one of them to the sea below. I told you the cliff would come into play.
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