The Time I Imagined Punching Macaulay Culkin
Bear with me before you react to that title, because I’m not talking about current Culkin, I meant when he was a kid...that didn’t help. Let me start at the beginning to explain my thought process on this. If you have never enjoyed the wonderful film that is The Good Son before reading this article, then I heavily suggest you make sure to do so afterwards!
This film was one that I saw multiple times throughout my childhood, and after giving it another watch as an adult with children I can appreciate it even more. Strangely, the film actually didn’t ever receive the attention that I felt it deserved. Money wise, it made a fair amount at the box office vs the budget eventually, but the opening weekend numbers of the film almost made it seem like a loss for Fox Studios.
To this day, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes both have unfavorable scores for this movie but they also have incredibly low numbers on how many people have actually rated and reviewed it. The Good Son is one of those movies that, in my opinion, is in an actor's top showcase and simply suffers from the fact that not enough people have seen it. My humble opinion is that this is one of Culkin’s best childhood films.
So now let me get into why it made me picture punching the Home Alone star in the adorable child face. The main plot of the film is surrounding a child named Mark Evans, played by Elijah Wood, whose mother passes away at the start of the film. His father needs to leave for business, so he sends him to live with his aunt and uncle for the winter. There we are introduced to his cousins, Henry and Connie. Henry, played by Macaulay Culkin, seems like a typical young kid at first. Maybe a little bit of a rebel for what appears to be a young age but we aren’t ever given exacts on that, both boys seem to be around 8 or 10 by my very poor judgement.
However, it doesn’t take too long in the film for the audience to start to get very unsettled vibes from Henry. Macaulay Culkin does an incredible job at such a young age of very quickly taking us from happy to incredibly concerned with just small gestures and excellent line deliveries. One of my favorite scenes is our first introduction to Henry’s twisted psyche as he tests a homemade metal screw bolt crossbow. After he narrowly misses shooting a cat, with a shot that was strong enough to lodge the bolt several threads deep in a tree, he mentions that the sight is off. It’s a very simple statement that he delivers in this perfect cold stare towards the camera, seemingly watching as the still-alive cat runs off to safety.
From that very instant you kind of go ‘oh fuck this creepy kid’ and you’re uncomfortable with him for pretty much the rest of the movie. You’ll find out you have every reason to be uncomfortable with him, and if you think I’ve spoiled anything then you would be shockingly wrong. I have not even dipped below the surface of the horrors this child delivers us throughout the film, every scene when we learn more about him, we just get tense and terrified for everyone else.
Poor young Mark who is dealing with his mother's passing, and now has to figure out something that no adult could handle either in my opinion. How do you tell people that you’ve realized your cousin might be a sociopath with dark and murderous intent towards your loved ones? Especially, how do you do that when your mother’s death has everyone gaslighting every concern you have as just you acting out of grief?
For all the amazing talent that Culkin shows as the tiny murderer, his counterpart in Elijah Wood playing Mark is the perfect pairing in my opinion. There’s a cat and mouse act happening between these two throughout the film, and they both play it off beautifully at such an incredibly young age. The adults of the cast are well chosen as well, with recognizable names like David Morse and Wendy Crewson, but ultimately the children of this cast honestly carry the film. Included within them even is Macaulay Culkin’s own sister Quinn Culkin as the young Connie. I could spend paragraphs talking about what a fantastic job that this cast has done with the film, but ultimately you should go watch it to truly appreciate their talents.
Now, to the point where you all have been waiting for. With all of this praise for the movie, and for the acting abilities of the kids, why on earth would I want to punch arguably the most adorable child actor of the ‘90s? Because he did his job well, and he was creepy as all hell, that’s why. I will do my best to describe this scenario without spoiling anything...Imagine a small blonde and precious looking Culkin, looking at you with his sweet but emotionless stare as he delivers a cold line dismissing your relationship. Then he charges at you with, very clearly, murderous and violent intent and is just this tiny bolt of murder running at you. How is your first instinct not to punch that in the face? I would challenge that even adult Macauley Culkin, if he was in the shoes of the character being charged at, would punch his child self in that situation.
In fact, I challenge all readers of this article; go watch The Good Son (streaming on Amazon, Hulu and YouTube), and then come back after you’ve seen the scene (and you will recognize it), and tell me honestly that your instinct at no point was to punch him out of that run. If you honestly can tell me that you wouldn’t punch him, then I will question if you ever wanted to drop kick Chucky from Child’s Play. Also, for self-defense curiosities, I would ask that you please advise on how else would you handle a tiny psychopath. My kids aren’t at that level of ‘creepy children’, but they’re still very young, time can still surprise me as much as this movie still can.
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