Rory Culkin | Hollywood’s Best Lunatic

Born on July 21, 1989, Rory Culkin is the youngest of 7 siblings. For a long time, his career was limited to playing younger versions of his brothers Kieran Culkin and Macaulay Culkin.

In 2000, he made his film debut as Rudy Prescott in the film “Stand by Me”, alongside Mark Ruffalo (Avengers) and Laura Linney (Ozark).

Two years later, Culkin played Morgan Hess in the film “Signs” written and produced by M. Knight Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), where he became known for the classic scene with the tinfoil helmet.

With films like Scream 4 (2011) and Lord of Chaos (2018) under his belt, a path was naturally traced in his career. Where, little by little, in horror films, Culkin gained prominence with roles where “madness” needs to be highlighted.

Rory Culkin on Under the banner of heaven

The 2022 series is set in the investigation into the murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby. In the suburbs of Salt Lake Valley, Utah, investigator Jeb Pyre struggles to find the culprits of such brutality, while trying to maintain faith in his religion.

In this series, Rory Culkin plays Samuel Lafferty, one of Ammon Lafferty’s sons. Sam is loyal to his brothers and tries to protect his family at all costs. In his speeches, he shows several times that he is ready to be “sacrificed” for the greater good.

In addition to the perfect characterization created by the production of Under the Banner of Heaven, Rory also delivers a lot in his performance. Perhaps it is due to his wide eyes, the projected speech or the body posture that indicates that he is ready to attack at any moment, the actor makes it clear the potential he has to project fanaticism and “madness” to the screen.

(I tried to find videos to illustrate, but all the videos available on Tik Tok were edited with music and sensual effects, which were very questionable)

In Brazil you can watch Under the banner of heaven on the Star+ streaming platform.

Rory Culkin on Black Mirror, season 6

The episode Beyond the Sea, season six of Black Mirror (available on Netflix), has space travel as its backdrop and introduces us to a “tool” developed so that astronauts can live their domestic lives alongside their families, while traveling in space.

With the option of transporting their consciousness to their doppelgangers who are on Earth, the characters Cliff Stanfield (Aaron Paul) and David Ross (Josh Hartnett) can live their daily lives in two different realities.

When David’s house is invaded by a sect that cannot accept his existence as something natural on Earth, he can do little to defend his family. And this is where our main character comes into action.

In the series, Rory does not have much prominence. His character, Kappa, only serves to kick off the main plot of this episode.

However, in the few scenes he appears, once again, he manages to convey all the nuances of his fanaticism in his beliefs.

Although both characters are driven by the same force, religious fanaticism/belief, when watching both series, it is clear that each character was thought and developed differently and Rory does not fail to convey this in front of the cameras.

If there is a genre exclusively dedicated to religious fanatics, the youngest of the Culkins can certainly be cast in several roles and play them all masterfully.

I don’t think he is ideal only for these types of roles, but after having watched so much of his work in a short period of time, I decided to write about the excellence in which Rory Culkin plays lunatics in the movies.

Without a doubt, the best lunatic in recent times.