The Good Son (1993) on Netflix
After his mother's death, ten-year-old Mark Evans is sent to Maine to stay with his aunt and uncle. His cousin Henry seems friendly, but his fascination with death worries Mark.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.4/1049,159 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes25%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ten-year-old Mark Evans has just lost his mother, Janice. Before leaving for a business trip to Tokyo, his father, Jack, brings him from Arizona to Rock Harbor, Maine, to stay with his Uncle Wallace and Aunt Susan over winter break. Mark has not seen the family in a decade, and he meets his cousins, six-year-old Connie and ten-year-old Henry. A third child, Richard, drowned a year earlier. Mark and Henry get along at first, and Henry seems nice and well-mannered, but Henry shows an abnormal fascination with death. Mark feels uneasy, and Henry's threats keep him from raising his worries with Wallace and Susan.
Cast
- Guy Straussas Arizona Doctor
- Keith Bravaas Doctor in Blackport
- Jerem Goodwinas Factory Worker
- Andria Hallas Reporter
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Good Son (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Macaulay Culkin only landed the role of Mark because his father and manager, Kit Culkin, made it a condition of Macaulay appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and Fox agreed given the young star's box-office bankability.
- In the United Kingdom the film's cinema release was postponed in the wake of a notorious child murder in February 1993, because of the perceived similarities; it was one of several films depicting child killers caught up in controversy after the case, alongside Child's Play 3 and the banned Mikey.
- 20th Century Fox commissioned novelist Ian McEwan, fresh off The Child in Time, to write a screenplay simply described as being "about evil - possibly concerning children," intending a low-budget prestige picture rather than a commercial blockbuster.
- Ian McEwan was eventually removed from the production and replaced by writer David Loughery, but when a shared-credit decision was contested, arbitration awarded McEwan sole screenwriting credit for the finished film.
- When the film finally reached British video shelves in 1995, censors cut 33 seconds from the car-pileup scene, reasoning that home video's greater risk of underage viewing made it more likely that children could copy what they saw.
