Picture Shirley Temple instead of Patty McCormack as the title character in "The Bad Seed," and you may understand the idea behind casting angel-faced Macaulay Culkin as "The Good Son."
The central character here is actually played by young Elijah Wood ("Forever Young," "The Adventures of Huck Finn"), from whose viewpoint the story is told. His mother dies in the film's opening segment, and his father has to leave him for a few weeks over the holidays to wrap up some business in Tokyo.
So, he's dropped off with his aunt, uncle and two cousins (Culkin and his real-life younger sister, Quinn.) Culkin immediately begins to initiate Wood into his mean-spirited activities by taking him to a warehouse where they break windows. But soon the mischief escalates to more malicious and malevolent activities.
When Culkin starts shooting metal bolts at animals and causes a 10-car pileup with a man-size dummy, Wood is shocked at how far his cousin is willing to push things. When Wood tries to back out of the activities, Culkin begins to use him as a patsy. Ultimately, Wood goes to Culkin's parents — but, of course, they don't believe him.
A slick, superficial thriller from Joel Ruben, director of "Sleeping With the Enemy" and "True Believer," "The Good Son" glides smoothly over its many plot holes and lapses in logic, though the story does not fare well under retrospective scrutiny.
The adults here are all incredibly obtuse, and considering the level of nastiness we observe, it's hard to believe no one has ever noticed anything in Culkin's behavior to tip them off to his true nature. (Of course, it is also never explained why Wood and Culkin's fathers, who are brothers on good terms, haven't seen each other in a decade, either.)
And Culkin is never really very believable in his role, though Wood does better, lending depth to a sketchily written character.
But then, "The Good Son" is not a think piece. Neither Ruben nor screenwriter Ian McEwan ("The Ploughman's Lunch") is interested in exploring the nature of evil or looking at questions of environment vs. genetics.
No, this picture is interested strictly in cheap thrills, accompanied by an intrusive Elmer Bernstein score, gorgeous location photography and fairly rapid pacing. And on that level it occasionally delivers — especially in a literal cliffhanging climax.
The R rating here is for theme rather than content. The violence is off-screen and, aside from a few scattered profanities — including Culkin's calculated use of the f-word — there is nothing here that would garner a rating heavier than PG or PG-13 under ordinary circumstances.
In this case it is justified, however. Whatever else it is, "The Good Son" is certainly not a film for children.
— JOEL RUBEN says Macaulay Culkin is just a normal kid, despite commanding $7 million per movie these days.
"Mac's a good kid," Ruben said during a telephone interview Tuesday. "He's nothing like the character he plays in this movie. He's fun-loving — and half the time I had to drag him away from a snowball fight or building a snow fort with Elijah (Wood).
"He's a delight and a damn good actor. He's the Kevin Costner or Mel Gibson of kid actors. The best."
Ruben said one of the reasons he wanted to direct "The Good Son" was because Culkin was already signed on to star. "I had the perverse joy of taking America's Shirley Temple and putting him in this role."
Among Ruben's other films are "Sleeping With the Enemy," starring Julia Roberts; "True Believer," with James Woods and Robert Downey Jr.; the sci-fi "Dreamscape," with Dennis Quaid; and the horror sleeper "The Stepfather."
"I like thrillers. They're real high-voltage, they've got a lot of juice and if they work well — and I think this one comes across — the audience gets really emotionally involved with it.
"At screenings (of `The Good Son') they were screaming, yelling, gasping — you can really connect with an audience.
"Of course, I'd like to try something different, a very different kind of film. But now that I've said that, I'll probably do another thriller."
As for "The Good Son" being released in the midst of heavy competition in theaters right now, Ruben says, "If a director tells you he doesn't care about (the first weekend's box-office performance), he's lying.
"In this case, the indications are good, the tracking is very, very good and there seems to be audience interest.
"Of course, that doesn't mean anything until they show up on Friday."