At the insistence of Kit Culkin, Macaulay's father, he chose to do a thriller and even made it a stipulation that Home Alone 2 wouldn't get Macaulay for the sequel otherwise. In retrospect, a fine decision I think. Although it wasn't received well at the time, The Good Son did go onto a semi-cult status and was a commercial success at the box office.
A nice hybrid of horror and action here and at the end of the movie, Macaulay Culkin pulls a Steve McQueen and does his own stunt jumping off a 180-foot high cliff into the ocean. That definitely upped my appreciation for this iconic kid actor and his performance here is spot-on, a bullseye from four hundred yards, not sure if anyone else could have pulled off such evil, worth every penny of the five million he got for this.
But we sure would be amiss if we didn't mention Elijah Wood's performance here - stunning. He was twelve years old when he did this. Again, I hope I don't throw these comments out undeservedly, but his performance is remarkable, and I think it was Oscar-nomination worthy - that good.
There were a lot of cast and crew changes because of Culkin's schedule and even the director was replaced, to good effect as they chose Joseph Ruben, the guy that did The Stepfather (1987) which of course spawned several sequels. Ruben also worked on another film I love, Joyride with Desi Arnez, Jr and Robert Carradine.
Thumbs way up on this one, streams on Tubi. 3.25 stars/5
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