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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | No fair? What do you think this is, a game? | „ |
| ~ Henry Evans' famous catchphrase. |
| “ | Hey, Mark? Don't f**k with me. | „ |
| ~ Henry threatening Mark. |
Henry Evans is the main antagonist of the 1993 psychological thriller drama film The Good Son.
He is the cruel, wicked, heartless, monstrous, and arrogant cousin and archenemy of Mark Evans, the film's titular main protagonist.
He was portrayed by Macaulay Culkin.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- Even if he wasn't always evil, he abandoned any redeeming qualities he may have had before the events.
- He drowned his baby brother Richard over a rubber duck that once belonged to him, purely out of envy of getting more attention.
- His playfulness with Mark when he first arrived was just a cooling off period to welcome Mark into the family, and he gradually got more and more dangerous as the movie went on.
- At a cemetery, he pressured Mark to smoke a cigarette, which he was reluctant to do since he didn't want cancer, before giving in, only to cough in disgust and hand it back to Henry, who callously replied that Mark was "gonna die anyway".
- He killed a dog that chased him and Mark earlier with a homemade crossbow and smiled when he lied that he was "just trying to scare him", leaving Mark horrified.
- He almost shot a cat with his crossbow, Mark thought he was just trying to scare her and that it was a good shot, only for Henry to callously say "but the sight's not right yet", meaning that he had planned to kill the cat.
- He convinced his cousin Mark to help him bring a dummy named "Mr. Highway" to a bridge, and when Henry pushed the dummy over onto a highway, it resulted in a massive car accident that could have killed or injured lots of innocent people, with him smiling at it with no remorse whatsoever while Mark looked on in complete horror.
- He insinuated to Mark that he might kill his little sister Connie, which made a concerned Mark spend the night in Connie's bedroom in case Henry might try to harm her.
- He tried to drown Connie in a frozen lake when they were skating together.
- To add further insult, he was pretending to reach in to try to save her.
- He almost suffocated Connie in her hospital bed by putting a pillow on her, only for his mother to stop him.
- He kept trying to manipulate his family, as well as Mark's therapist, Dr. Alice Davenport, who was requested by Mark's father Jack to keep an eye on him following his mother's death, into making Mark look like the crazy one instead of himself.
- When Dr. Davenport asked Henry about Mark's mental issue, he dismissed her question by answering that it was confidential between him and Mark.
- He enviously claimed Susan is his mother and not Mark, as well as openly referring to Mark's mother as "maggot food".
- When Mark climbed down Henry's treehouse, the latter threatened the former not to "f*ck with [him]".
- He hinted to Mark that he poisoned the food in his family's refrigerator when Mark went to grab something to eat because he had trouble sleeping, forcing his fearful cousin throw all of the food from the fridge down the garbage disposal, and Henry orchestrated this incident to make Mark appear as unhinged.
- After Henry delivered a short, insincere apology and lied that he kept the duck as "something to remember Richard by", he asked his mother for his duck back, to which Susan refused, and he forcefully grabbed the duck from her hand and ran off to the cemetery to throw it down the well.
- It is possible he could have also plotted to push his mother down the well if she had tried to retrieve the toy duck because of his envious, selfish, untrustworthy, and cunning nature.
- With crocodile tears on his eyes, he asked Mark if he would cry at his mother's funeral, before he spitefully referred to Susan as Mark's mother and not his, dismissing her as his own mother, then hinting to Mark that he might kill her.
- Fearing for his family, Mark wrestled Henry to the couch and held a pair of scissors near his throat, threatening to kill him if he tried to kill Susan. Henry then pressured to his cousin to do it, knowing fully well Mark would be charged with murder if he were to kill him in cold blood.
- When Wallace entered the living room, Henry lied to his dad that Mark was trying to hurt him, making Wallace separate them and lock Mark in his study until Dr. Davenport arrived, giving Henry an opportunity to kill Susan.
- After inviting his mother out for a walk in the woods, Susan asked him to tell her the truth if he killed Richard, with Henry sarcastically asking "What if I did?", much to his mother's shock, having now learned the true nature of her son, including confirming Mark's suspicion.
- Fearing he would be sent to prison or a mental hospital, Henry tried running away and lied to his mother that he would commit suicide by jumping off a cliff.
- Once she arrived at the cliff, he revealed his presence and pushed her off the ledge, trying to use a rock to drop it on Susan when she was hanging onto a branch for dear life.
- He showed himself to be a hypocrite to the point of hating his mother deeply, yet being surprised to see her choosing Mark over him and letting him fall from the cliff to his defeat and demise, suggesting he took her love to him for granted. Furthermore, this was just after he tried pushing her to fall to her death.
- It's very obvious that if Susan saved him and not Mark, Henry wouldn't have learned anything from the experience and would have continued to harm and kill innocent people for his own amusement.
- Despite being a child, he is shown to have a clear moral agency and willingly commits his crimes.
- While the movie does bring into question whether or not the concept of pure evil exists, with Mark's therapist, Dr. Davenport, saying that "evil" is a word people use when they've given up trying to understand someone", Henry is portrayed as being irredeemably monstrous and does not show any remorse for his actions, nor has any sympathetic traits that could qualify him as "misunderstood".
- The fact the movie ended with his death, which is literally played for karmic satisfaction rather than sympathy, solidifies that Henry was indeed evil down to his core and that Dr. Davenport was wrong about him.
Trivia[]
- It is an irony that he is a complete foil to his sympathetic and gold-hearted cousin Mark, who is Pure Good.
- Even more ironic, he's also a Chaotic Evil to his mother's Lawful Good.
- In even further twist of irony, despite Henry Evans being a Hate Sink, Macaulay Culkin actually enjoyed playing him.
- He is one of the youngest pure evil characters on this wiki.
External Links[]
- Henry Evans on the Villains Wiki
- Henry Evans on the Hate Sink Wiki
