Henry Evans

## Villain Description

### Goals

Murder his entire family (succeeded with his baby brother Richard; failed with the rest)
Convince Mark to join him (failed)

### Hobbies

Committing numerous atrocities, including (but not limited to) killing animals with his crossbow, causing massive car crashes, etc
Smoking

### Type of Villain

Psychopathic Child

**Henry Evans** is the main antagonist of the 1993 psychological drama film, *The Good Son*. He is the cousin of Mark Evans and brother of Connie, who, unlike other children, plots to kill his entire family so he could do as much odious acts as he wanted.

He was portrayed by Macaulay Culkin.

## Biography

### Background

Henry Evans was born to Wallace and Susan Evans, eventually having a sister named Connie Evans and a baby brother named Richard Evans. Before the events of the movie, Henry murdered Richard out of envy by drowning him inside a bathtub just so he could get all the praise from his family again, as their parents treated Richard with more attention than Henry. Since then, he started to do many other crimes purely because he enjoyed it, as his family's attention no longer mattered to him.

### *The Good Son*

Henry is first introduced as being a friendly child looking for a friend, and hangs out with Mark when they first meet each other. During this period of time, Mark starts to notice that Henry's ideas of what's fun and what's not differentiates from his own. This starts when Henry shows him his homemade crossbow and tries to shoot a cat, but misses. After that, Mark suggests that Henry shoot the crossbow at the sign or the light, but Henry refuses. However, when he sees the neighbor's dog, he shoots it to his death, having no emotion in his eyes. When Mark is disturbed by this, Henry lies that he was only trying to scare the dog.

Afterwards, Henry shows Mark a dummy he created, named "Mr. Highway", and promises to show Mark something amazing that he'll never forget if the latter helps him put the dummy on the side of the bridge. However, when Mark does what Henry had him do, the latter deliberately breaks his promise when he shoves Mr. Highway off the bridge into the highway below, causing a 10-car pileup in the process. When the police come to investigate, Henry and Mark run off, and the former tries to corrupt him into becoming just like him, telling him that he'll be free once he realizes he can do anything.

After that, Henry pressures Mark into smoking with him because they're going to die anyway, although Mark shows remorse for this, and Henry also reveals he was the one behind Richard's death. Having had enough of this, Mark tries to do everything to warn Aunt Susan and Uncle Wallace about their son's true nature, but they don't believe him. Seeing that Henry is now plotting to murder his own sister, Connie, Mark spends the night in her room to make sure she is safe and unharmed, and even reads her a bedtime story. The following morning, Henry takes Connie ice-skating where he deliberately shoves her onto thin ice where she falls into the freezing water and calls Henry for help. While Henry does come over to her, he reveals his true nature to her by cruelly raising his hand when she tries to reach for it. Although Connie nearly drowns, she is rescued and taken to the hospital.

Soon, Mark tries to warn Susan about Henry's true nature, but she doesn't believe him. However, she starts to become suspicious when she stops Henry from suffocating Connie to her death. She then finds a rubber ducky in Henry's shed: the same one that belonged to his baby brother Richard when he was playing in the bathtub the night he was drowned to his death, after which it went missing. When Henry reveals to Mark that he's plotting to kill his mother, Mark viciously tries to kill him to ensure it never happens, but Wallace catches him in the act and locks him up in his study, an event Henry could use to go for a walk with his now-suspicious mother so he could eventually kill her. However, unbeknownst to him, Mark was able to escape from the study to save Susan.

During her walk with Henry, Susan asks Henry about what he did the night Richard died, to which he lies that he was downstairs playing. However, Susan catches him in the lie this time, and queries him if he killed Richard, and Henry, unable to hide his true nature anymore, confirms that he was responsible for drowning Richard to his death. Seeing that her suspicions are now confirmed, Susan tries to take Henry back home, but he, without any evidence whatsoever, assumes that she wants to send him to a reformatory, and runs off, faking that he jumped to his death off a cliff leading to a rocky bay. When Susan runs to the edge of said cliff and is saddened by Henry's apparent death, Henry tells her that she doesn't truly know him very well, and shoves his mother off the cliff to kill her even though she hangs on to a branch, so he attempts to throw a boulder at Susan to finally kill her.

However, Mark saves Susan at the last minute by tackling Henry, and the two kids fight to the death, but they almost tumble off the cliff. Susan catches both Mark and Henry in time and struggles to save them both, but soon realizes that she can only save one of them. Seeing that Mark saved her life and Henry tried to kill her (and would probably do it again), Susan saves Mark instead, leaving Henry to fall to his death at the rocks below. After Susan saves Mark, the two emotionally watch as Henry's dead body is washed up by the ocean waves, and at the end of the movie, Mark concludes that he sometimes wonders if Susan would save him instead if the same situation happens again, but claims that he'll never ask her.

## Personality

At first, Henry may seem like an innocent, nice kid, but his true nature quickly starts to unfold. He is actually surprisingly vile for a 10-11 year-old kid, being extremely sadistic as he would repeatedly commit crimes without any emotion nor remorse. He was very fascinated with the idea of killing innocents, despite knowing it was wrong. Despite this, Henry was also manipulative and deceitful, as he tried to get Mark to commit crimes with him and manipulated the psychiatrist into believing that he was very confused and amoral, even though he wasn't at all.

## Trivia

* Despite Henry being the key character in the film's poster, Mark is actually the titular Good Son because, despite not being Susan's actual son, saved her life in the climax from her son, Henry, who was, in contrast, a murderous psychopath who tried to kill her.