The Good Boy | Dir: Jan Komasa | ★ ★ ★ ★
After seeing the trailer for Polish director Jan Komasa’s film The Good Boy (not to be confused with the 2025 horror film about a dog – Good Boy), I expected a grim horror film that was unsettling, dark, sinister and mega-violent. But I certainly didn’t expect to laugh so much at the bleak, black humour.
The taut thriller has all the pedigree of a horror film. An eerie, old, badly lit country mansion with no neighbours in sight with creepy residents; a dingy cellar with a young man chained with a dog collar and suspenseful music warning of imminent danger.
Nineteen-year-old hoodlum Tommy (Anson Boon) has been kidnapped after yet another drug and alcohol fuelled night of random violence on the streets of London. He wakes up, chained in the basement belonging to family man Chris (Stephen Graham) who is intent on rehabilitating him.
Also living in the eerie house is Chris’s wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), who he has nicknamed Princess, drifting about like a solemn spectre who knows the secrets that the house keeps. Their son 10-year-old Jonathon (Kit Rakusen), whose nickname is Sunshine, is exactly that … which is very disconcerting.
The only addition to the household is Rina (Monika Frajczyk), who cleans twice a week and tries to ignore Tommy who, it is explained, “is going through a rebellious stage”. The undocumented Macedonian has escaped from her ‘handler’ and needs the work.
While not giving away much of what happens in the house, the strength of the film is that all the characters end up revealing that they are capable of contradicting our preconceptions of them.
Mild-mannered Chris is capable of disturbing violence and the faie Princess has rigid expectations about how people should behave. Despite living in fear, Rina finds it difficult to break her family bonds, and the totally toxic Tommy shows that he has some redeeming features.
Blurring the distinctions between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, The Good Boy is a twisted thriller whose horror pedigree is the foundation for a huge amount of humour, and even a little bit of social reflection.
Lezly Herbert
