The Good Son- Movie Critique

          McEwan's film begins with a young boy named Mark who makes a promise to his perishing mother that he will not let her die, no matter what. Tragically, the mother passes away and the father decides to continue with his plans of going on a business trip to Tokyo for a time period of two weeks. Reluctant to leave, Mark is handed over to his Aunt and Uncle to stay with them during Christmas break while his father is absent. Because of a similar age, Mark and his cousin Henry become instant friends and goof around all day. One afternoon, the two chaotic boys began to climb up to the tree house when one of the branches break, leaving Mark dangling in the treetops. Henry holds on to him and states "if I let you go, do you think you could fly?" but quickly pulls Mark onto the platform. Spending time in the graveyard and standing on the well, Henry asked some strange questions to Mark about seeing his dead mother and began to describe the looks and the physical touch of his dead brother when he drowned, showing no remorse or emotional sadness. Henry also shows Mark the bow/gun that he has created in his shed and they both decide to test out the accuracy by simply scaring a cat. Henry hints at the fact that he wished the aim was better as he watches his alive target walk away. The next time the two boys play around with the bow/gun, Henry successfully shoots and kills a dog that chases them. Completely mortified, Mark begins to question the things that Henry finds pleasurable. They carry off the bloody dog body and throw it into the well in the graveyard to hide the evidence. Henry convinces Mark to go with him to do "something he will never forget," but they end up standing on an overpass that crosses a busy highway. Henry hurls a stuffed scarecrow body over the edge and giggles at the damage and the accidents of the cars below. They sprint away from the arriving police and hide in a drainage pipe where Henry explains his motives of being able to do anything you want, being free and able to fly. As the parents go out one night, Henry cuts all the lights off in the house and Mark races around trying to find and protect his younger cousin, Connie. The next morning, Mark wakes up to find out that Henry took his younger sister Connie ice skating. Just as Mark sprints across the ice, he sees Henry fling Connie onto the danger zone of thin ice. Connie falls through the ice and Henry makes little to basically no efforts in pulling out his sister. She slides under the ice and two men hack away to get her out. Mark runs to the cliff that his Aunt visits to remember her dead son and tells his Aunt that Henry purposely tried to kill her daughter. Denying the truth, she goes to the hospital. Later on that night, Henry shows up in Connie's hospital room to smother her with a pillow but his mom, sitting in the dark, stops him in time by turning on the light. Late at night, Henry tells Mark that he has contaminated all of the food in the house and Mark begins to throw everything down the garbage disposal. No one believes the truth about Henry and no one believes Mark- not his aunt, not his uncle, not his own father, or his pediatric therapist. Mark's aunt finally notices Henry's aggressive and destructive behavior when she finds the rubber duck that belonged to the deceased son in Henry's shed in the woods. Henry takes his mom out for a walk, confessed to killing his younger brother and runs to the cliff. Surprisingly, Henry ends up behind his mother and pushes her off the edge, leaving her tumbling down to the sharp rocks below. Mark tackles Henry as his aunt climbs up the cliff. In the end, both boys end up dangling over the side, each in one hand of the mother. Telling her to let go of Mark, Henry switches into a loving son, wanted her to save him. Courageously, the mother lets go off her own murdering son to save the life of her nephew, Mark.


           The Good Son displays the rising of a serial killer personality in Henry. Henry has one of the three early signs of a serial killer which are bed wetting at a preadolescence age, obsession with starting numerous fires, and cruel actions of torturing animals ("What Makes Serial Killers Tick?" Scott, Crime Library). Henry shows pleasure in torturing animals by building a bow/gun, aiming at the cat, and actually killing the aggressive dog. Henry also murders his own brother by drowning him in the bath tube.
            Henry also is an advent example of the antisocial personality disorder which is defined as a personality disorder in which the person, usually a man, exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even towards friends and family (Myers, 597). Henry can be characterized as a sociopath or a psychopath because of his amoral foundation, his manipulating tendencies, and his lack of remorse for his evil actions. The Evens family do not suspect any type of disorder within Henry because of the facade he has of being charming and passive around his parents. His fearless approach to life, along with his unemotional responses combine together under the antisocial personality disorder category.
            Lastly, there are clear mentions of denial, which is a psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe of even to perceive painful realities (Myers, 484) but also one of the five stages of grief established by Kubler-Ross and Kessler (Kessler, Grief.com). Henry's parents and the pediatric therapist had small views of denial that Henry was a sociopath and had a major disorder. Susan, Henry's mother eventually overcame her denial and accepted the hard reality that her son did indeed murder her younger son, tried to kill her daughter, and tempted to kill her as well. Mark, on the other hand, expressed denial as part of the grieving process for the loss of his mother when he jumps out of the car and runs away from his dad on the way to his Aunt and Uncle's house located in Maine.


            The movie accurately depicts both situations dealing with denial because the parents refuse to acknowledge Henry's psychopathic tendencies and Mark's denial of the death of his mother. His parents do not want to face the reality that Henry drowned and murdered their younger son. Mark's dad was hesitant to believe his own son about Henry because he suggests that Mark should talk to the pediatric therapist. Mark denies the fact that his mother is gone, but eventually reasons that she is always with him and that his mother will return, not as herself, but in another way to be in his life. All of the characters in the film are shadowed from the truth by rejecting reality in some shape or form.
            The Good Son accurately portrays Henry as a child serial killer and a sociopath from his antisocial personality disorder because he tortures animals, expresses no remorse, manipulates people and switches between a loving son and an evil son. Henry is a professional child con artist by convincing everyone in his life that he is a normal, rambunctious little boy that would never hurt anyone. He often changes the focus off of himself and forces everyone to worry and analyze Mark's well being. Cleverly, Henry is able to get away with many things throughout the entire movie by undermining people and switching between personalities to never be suspected of evil.


            In conclusion, The Good Son was a horror film that contains many psychological elements such as the five stages of grief, the serial killer triad, and antisocial personality disorder tendencies. It was a good example of psychology within media in the world and displays an accurate depiction of the natural behaviors, actions, and emotions of a sociopath at a younger adolescence age.


Kessler, David. "The Five Stages of Grief." Griefcom Because Love Never Dies. David Kessler, n.d.

Web. 25 Feb. 2013. <http://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/>.
Myers, David G. Reprint ed. Vol. 13. New York City: Worth, 2011. Print.

Scott, Shirley L. "What Makes Serial Killers Tick?" â€” Monsters or Victims? — Crime Library on           TruTV.com. Turner Entertainment Networks, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013. <http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/tick/victims_1.html