Movie Reviews : Are You Ready For Macaulay as Bad Seed? : The ‘Home Alone’ star tries to deepen and darken the scope of his roles with part in ‘The Good Son.’

“The Good Son” is an ending in search of a movie. Its climactic scene (fear not, it won’t be revealed here) is the kind of high concept predicament that is supposed to send audiences out of theaters with a buzz on their lips. Instead it can do no more than point up how flat what’s come before has been.

With a script credited to novelist Ian McEwan (“The Cement Garden,” “The Comfort of Strangers”), though in sore need of his usual ambiguity and edge, “The Good Son” (citywide) is yet another reworking of familiar “Bad Seed” themes, in which very evil thoughts come in very small packages.

Rated R for “acts of violence and terror involving a disturbed child,” “The Good Son” will also be known as the movie where young Macaulay Culkin, the CEO of the billion-dollar “Home Alone” industry, decided, either with or without adult urging, that he was tired of playing a cute urchin with a friendly grin. Eager to deepen and darken the scope of his roles, he chose this picture to do it in, not, as it turns out, the wisest of decisions.

Though Culkin’s name is listed first on the credits, “The Good Son” is really the story of another 12-year-old boy, Mark Evans, played by the sturdy, saucer-eyed star of “Huck Finn,” Elijah Wood.

Mark’s lot in life is not a happy one. No sooner does the film open but his mother dies, though not before she takes the time to promise that she’ll always be with him. And Mark’s dad, Jack (David Morse), finds he has to leave for a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity in Japan just after the funeral ends. What to do with young Mark?

Not to worry, says Mark’s uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly). The lad can live with my wife and our two children in our typically photogenic New England town of Rock Harbor. “It’ll only be for two weeks,” Dad promises. Need one say that they will be the longest weeks in young Mark’s life?

Wallace used to have three children, Mark discovers, but toddler Richard unexpectedly drowned in a tub. That leaves 8-year-old Connie (Quinn Culkin) and her older brother Henry (Macaulay Culkin), on the surface, the good son every father would like to have.

But though he seems like a regular kid, Henry, Mark soon discovers, has a, shall we say, scientific side. For this young man is fascinated by death, wants to learn all he can about it, even took notes (notes!) when he saw his baby brother in his fatal tub. Ever the conscientious researcher, Henry soon embarks on some experiments of his own, but when an unsympathetic, not to say terrified, Mark tries to spill the beans, he finds no one wants to hear his tale.

Director Joseph Ruben (“Sleeping With the Enemy,” “True Believer,” “The Stepfather”) is a capable, energetic filmmaker who has been successful with this kind of pulpy material in the past. And he tries hard here, even throwing in enough dizzying crane shots to unnerve a tightrope walker.

But the unsurprising, one-note nature of “The Good Son,” the fact that it’s a bump-in-the-night movie where all the bumps are visible a mile ahead, sorely constricts any possibility of excitement. Mark may get increasingly frantic at Henry’s doings, but nobody in the audience is likely to share his concern.

Macaulay Culkin is not what’s wrong with “The Good Son,” but in all honesty his performance doesn’t help. Not every actor, no matter what the age, can convey the dark side, and Culkin comes off more sullen and pouty than evil. He works at it, but he can’t overcome the fact that he is simply miscast.

All this is especially ironic given the fact that “The Good Son” was delayed a year so Culkin, not the original choice but a power at the studio due to “Home Alone,” could fit it into his schedule, even though that meant that the original producer and director and even some of the cast ended up being replaced. While this film may be beneficial for the Culkin clan (sister Quinn makes her film debut and even brother Rory gets a screen credit for appearing as a photograph of the deceased Richard), it will not do the holder of the family franchise nearly as much good.

‘The Good Son’

Macaulay Culkin: Henry

Elijah Wood: Mark

Wendy Crewson: Susan

David Morse: Jack

Daniel Hugh Kelly: Wallace

Released by Twentieth Century Fox Pictures. Director Joseph Ruben. Producers Mary Anne Page, Joseph Ruben. Executive producers Ezra Swerdlow, Daniel Rogosin. Screenplay Ian McEwan. Cinematographer John Lindley. Editor George Bowers. Costumes Cynthia Flynt. Music Elmer Bernstein. Production design Bill Groom. Art director Rusty Smith. Set decorator George DeTitta Jr. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (acts of violence and terror involving a disturbed child).