We all have certain movies we love. Movies we respect without question because of either tradition, childhood love, or because they’ve always been classics. However, as time keeps ticking, do those classics still hold up? Do they remain must-see? So…the point of this column is to determine how a film holds up for a modern horror audience, to see if it stands the Test of Time.
DIRECTED BY JOSEPH RUBEN
STARRING MACAULAY CULKIN, ELIJAH WOOD, QUINN CULKIN, DAVID MORSE, WENDY CREWSON
Anyone else happen to catch THE GOOD SON in the movie theater as a prepubescent preteen? Here’s a better question, if so, have you yet recovered from the psychological trauma incurred on you by such a dark drama. Because straight up, it’s been over 25 years and I’m still not sure I’ve fully sewn up the psychic scars the movie lashed across my mind. I’m not sure this movie is even appropriate for 10 years olds to watch unless it’s designed as a morality play to teach youngsters how to best behave. Even still, for kids and adults alike, THE GOOD SON is a deeply disturbing exploration of a grieving mother forced into an unthinkable Sophies’s Choice scenario. Now, through the eyes of an adult, it’ll be interesting to see how the flick plays in 2019. Let’s assess how THE GOOD SON has so far fared against The Test of Time below!
THE STORY: Scripted by acclaimed novelist Ian McEwan, THE GOOD SON kicks off with an incredibly dark downer. A young boy named Mark (Elijah Wood) has seen his mother fall gravely ill. He promises she’ll never die so long as he’s by her side, but then we cut to a weepy funeral. Mark cannot accept his mother’s death. He insists she’s coming back one day, and even begins to hallucinate her image in the corners of his eye. As a result, Mark’s father Jack (David Morse) thinks it wise to send the troubled youngster to coastal Maine in the dead of winter to stay with his aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson), uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly), cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin) and niece Connie (Quin Culkin). Shy at first, Mark’s sadness is temporarily supplanted when Henry begins to play with him in their sprawling piece of land.
Henry shows Mark his treehouse, which the latter can hardly climb. When he reaches the top, he almost falls until Henry catches him by the arm. It’s a visual foreshadow to the finale, which director Joseph Ruben (THE STEPFATHER) establishes quite brilliantly. Soon, Henry begins to show his true side of evil to Mark, which includes building a homemade gun that fires steel bolts. After scaring a cat, Henry goes for the kill when he aims the gun at a passing dog. Later, Henry escalates his sinister behavior by tossing a dummy into oncoming traffic, causing a lethal 10 car pileup (a scene that inspired countless imitators in real life, resulting in the movie being banned in certain places). But the absolute kicker is when Henry, jealous of all of his siblings, tries to murder his kid sister Connie by hurling her onto a sheet of thin ice on a rollerskating escapade. When Mark tries to voice his concerns to his aunt and uncle, they dismiss him, blame his grief for acting out, and begin siding with Henry over Mark’s word. It isn’t until Susan makes a frightening and heartbreaking discovery in Henry’s play shed that she realizes the truth – that her little angel is no angel at all, but a jealous and conniving killer who will do anything and say anything to remain out of trouble. As Jack rushes back to save Mark in the nick of time, Mark, in turn, saves Susan from her son’s murderous intent.
WHAT HOLDS-UP: At a fast-paced 86 minutes, there’s little about THE GOOD SON that fails to work these days. The first things that must be mentioned though are the central performances by its two young leads, Wood and Culkin. Culkin in particular, who comes off his smash-hit HOME ALONE franchise, where his lovable charms win the day, here plays against type as a psychotic child who is wise beyond his years. I think this is why, in the movie ORPHAN, the character is explained to be far older than she appears. Henry simply does and says things that are far beyond his age, which makes the precocious turn from Culkin so creepy.
Two examples of his skillful acting in the movie include one part where, just as he misses the cat’s head with a bolt, slightly licks his lips as if he’s thirsty or even like he just ate (like a cat), which subtly denotes his hunger for killing. His bloodlust. Another part comes when he throws the rubber ducky into the wishing well. When he approaches the well, he winds up his arm as if he’s angry and ready to aggressively fire the duck away. But at the last second, his demeanor changes and he lightly flips the duck in the hole instead. This is a brilliant piece of acting to show his psychological state, and how volatilely he goes from angry and aggressive to calm and even a bit playful. Of course, with Wood giving a solid turn as the straight one, who in many ways is given the harder task to play (less showy), the entire movie would not work. While Wood does go a little overboard in spots, his turn in the film is what makes you care about anything that transpires by the end.
What else holds up is the crisp cinematography and sweeping overhead shots by DP John Lindley (THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW), which captures the frigid and frosty winter environment of Coastal Maine. Whether it’s the establishing shots, the treehouse shots, or the iconic cliff locale that Susan goes to mourn and meditate…they photography in the film has not lost any of its lusters in the last 25 years. The balletic camera moves and static framing both work well together, which also helps pace the film in a way that stays engaging right until the very end. As aforesaid, the visual foreshadowing Lindley showcases here is very interesting as much of the camera placement hovers overhead, giving us glimpses of what’s to come. The ominous cliffside looms like a specter in several shots, informing us that something evil will inevitably transpire in this very space.
To wit, the vertiginous head-spinning, jaw-dropping finale is probably the number one aspect of the movie that holds up the most. This is tour-de-force filmmaking at its most enthrallingly visceral. Word is Wood and Culkin spent six weeks training for and rehearsing the scene. Instead of filming off the East coast as scripted, the location chosen was overlooking Lake Superior in Minnesota (fitting, as the movie is about which son is superior). An artificial edifice was created to extend from the real cliff 180 feet high, while many boats below were working offscreen to simulate ocean waves.
Several stunt riggers and FX men were hidden in the caves just below, controlling the movement of Henry when he suffers his ultimate fate. The result speaks for itself, especially if you saw this shite on the big-screen. Hell, I think my fear of heights may be derived from this very sequence. Shite’s insane enough to cause a coronary. Of course, the moral decision Susan must face – as heartbreaking as it is – remains at the center of the dramatic power of the movie. Having already lost her baby, Richard (Rory Culkin), the decision to let another go to save an unrelated better, is gut-wrenching prospect no matter how it turns out. Yup, THE GOOD SON has one of the most harrowing movie endings ever!
WHAT BLOWS NOW: Having just revisited the flick, I can say that I found the sweepingly mawkish score by Elmer Bernstein does not fit very well. I get the need to balance such a grimly toned film with an upbeat vibration, but the counterpoints don’t quite jive as intended. Anytime the overbearing score kicks up, it undermines the sinister tone that pervades the rest of the film. But who knows, had a darker score been used to properly reverberate the tone, perhaps the movie would be too damn disturbing to stomach. It almost is already, even with the saccharine score.
THE VERDICT: All told, THE GOOD SON most definitely holds up well today. It’s short and bittersweet but excels most in its precocious performances by Wood and Culkin, the stunning camerawork by John Lindley, and the absolutely dizzying and terrifying finale. Even all grown up, THE GOOD SON is still damn good after all these years!