Weird, wonderful, and occasionally frustrating, the experience of watching Good Boy is, mercifully, only somewhat like being chained up in the cellar of a stranger’s house.
Good Boy (also released in some places as Heel, no doubt to avoid confusion with the movie of the same name that came out last year) is the latest from Polish director Jan Komasa, probably best known for his tremendous 2014 war epic Warsaw 44. So, for him to turn his attention to a small-scale middle England thriller was a bit of a departure – but in the best way possible.
The premise of Good Boy is, on paper, deranged: a married couple, Chris (Stephen Graham) and Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) kidnap and imprison Tommy, a teenage delinquent with a history of drug abuse, petty crime, and posting all about the above on his social media. They intend to re-educate Tommy on how to be a decent member of society, keeping him chained in their basement and subjecting him to various methods of torture with the belief that it will change him for the better.
And tonally, the movie is just as weird as its premise might suggest. The crisp, clipped, almost parochial nature of the home and family that Tommy finds himself trapped as a part of is downright funny at times, while much of the movie drips with an uneasy uncertainty as to how either Tommy or his captors will react at any given moment. There’s elements of thriller here, horror, drama, even romance, as Komasa blurs the edges of genre in a story that never quite settles on any particular spot. Even the plot is reticent in revealing itself, dumping the viewer in the midst of Tommy’s story with about as much explanation as he is privy to.
And, for some, Komasa’s restraint will read as frustratingly evasive. There’s a lot left unsaid in The Good Boy, the mystery of the house’s previous occupant left unaddressed by the time the credits roll, at least directly, and everything that brought the characters to this point is hinted at instead of outright addressed. Honestly, there were times when I found myself falling into that camp too, but the riveting character work is what really makes The Good Boy sing.
Ansoon Boone starts off almost comically self-aggrandizing and monstrous, only to peel away those layers in a surprisingly subtle performance over the film’s runtime, turning into a wide-eyed zealot for his one-time captors. Graham and Riseborough have an endlessly compelling dynamic that’s given life by the deft skill both bring to their roles, though perhaps my favourite performance in the whole movie might be Kit Rakusen, their son. He brings such an odd, wide-eyed innocence to proceedings that’s almost entirely contradictory to the horror at the movie’s heart, serving to enhance it in his juxtaposition rather than undermine it, and, given his age, it’s hard not to be impressed at how well he keeps up with the established adult cast.
Good Boy is a profoundly and wonderfully weird movie, and one that really gives plenty of space for its excellent cast to shine. A strange set of character studies wrapped up in a thriller studded with black comedy, it’s one of the most unique movies of the year so far, and another sterling addition to Komasa’s varied and inventive back catalogue.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Screen Realm)
No But Listen 