Good Son, The

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.