The Good Son (film)

Mark Evans is a boy whose mother, Janice, has recently died. Mark's father, Jack, is about to leave for a business trip, so he takes him to Maine to spend his winter break with his aunt, Susan, and his uncle, Wallace. Mark meets his cousins, Connie and Henry. However, Henry displays a fascination with death, as he talks to Mark about the deaths of Janice and his younger brother, Richard, which makes Mark feel uncomfortable.

Henry also begins to display psychopathic behavior, which Mark doesn't tell to Susan and Wallace, as Henry threatens him. When Henry plans to kill Connie, Mark spends the night in her room. The next morning, Mark finds Henry has taken Connie ice skating, where he purposely throws her towards thin ice, which collapses, causing Connie to fall in. Connie nearly drowns, but is rescued and taken to a hospital. Susan starts to become suspicious and finds a rubber ducky that belonged to Richard and was with him when he drowned. Susan confronts Henry, who tells her that it belonged to him first and asks for it back, but Susan refuses. Henry then takes it, runs to a cemetery, and throws it down a well.

A fight breaks out between Mark and Henry, causing Wallace to lock Mark in their den. Henry takes Susan for a walk, while Mark escapes and chases after them. Susan confronts Henry, asking him if he killed Richard, which Henry confesses to. Susan tells Henry that he needs help, but Henry runs away to a cliff and Susan follows. When Susan gets to the cliff, Henry pushes her off, but she grabs onto the edge. Henry prepares to kill Susan by dropping a rock on her, but Mark tackles him and they fight while Susan pulls herself up. Susan grabs hold of Mark and Henry as they roll off. With only enough strength to save one of them, Susan reluctantly lets go of Henry and he falls to his death. When Mark returns home, he thinks about Susan's choice to save him instead of Henry, wonders if she would make the same choice again, and knows that he will never ask her that.

Following the completion of his novel The Child in Time, English novelist Ian McEwan was invited by 20th Century Fox to write a screenplay "about evil – possibly concerning children." McEwan recalled, "The idea was to make a low budget, high class movie, not something that Fox would naturally make a lot of money on." Despite being well received, the end result was deemed insufficiently commercial by the parties that commissioned it and it floated around Hollywood until being discovered by independent producer Mary Ann Page. Enthusiastic about the script, originally sent to her as a writing sample, Page tried to get the project off the ground for three and a half years. The film was briefly set up at Universal Studios, during which Brian Gilbert was attached as director. In 1988, Michael Klesic was originally cast in the role of Henry Evans. The film was soon after put on hold due to a lack of funding.

Following the successes of Home Alone and The Silence of the Lambs, which respectively demonstrated the appeal of both a movie about kids and of an "extreme thriller," Fox itself chose to revisit the project, which they now saw as viable. Director Michael Lehmann (Heathers) became attached, Laurence Mark was appointed as a co-producer and McEwan was called in for rewrites. Mary Steenburgen was cast as Susan and Jesse Bradford had replaced Klesic as Henry because he had grown too old to play the part. 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 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.

As the movie was originally scheduled to shoot at the same time as Home Alone 2, the start date for The Good Son was pushed back for a year, making Steenburgen no longer available and having her replaced by Wendy Crewson but also enabling Elijah Wood's involvement. Director Lehmann and producer Mark conflicted with the imposition, leading both to leave the project. The demanding Culkin would go on to insist that his sister Quinn receive a role in the film and vetted replacement director Joseph Ruben (Sleeping with the Enemy). Furthermore, the budget had risen to an estimated $20 million. McEwan found himself performing further rewrites that continued to simplify the story to satisfy Ruben's comparatively mainstream tastes and was ultimately unceremoniously removed from the project altogether when another screenwriter was commissioned, Ruben's frequent collaborator David Loughery. Despite this, McEwan was awarded sole writing credit in arbitration when he contested a shared credit.[3]

The Good Son was theatrically released on September 24, 1993. It was released on VHS in 1994. A DVD of the film was released on September 11, 2012.[4] A Blu-ray release of The Good Son was announced on October 25, 2016[5] and was released on August 1, 2017.[6]

Elmer Bernstein's score to The Good Son was released in 1993 by Fox Music.[7] The score was orchestrated by Emilie A. Bernstein and Patrick Russ.

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".

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 ends Henry's bad conduct while in the latter the mother is unable to stop Rhoda Penmark.[20]

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