Good Boy

Nineteen-year-old hooligan Tommy (Anson Boon) is on a bender with his wild friends. When he becomes separated from the group, he continues partying into the early hours. Though he is no stranger to inflicting violence, Tommy is horrified when he wakes with a chain around his neck in the basement of the isolated suburban family home of well-to-do Chris (Stephen Graham), his wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their young son Jonathan. The kidnapping is part of a process of turning Tommy into a “good boy,” which he — at first — vehemently rejects. Finding himself the subject of a forced rehabilitation while trapped inside a dysfunctional family unit, he seeks escape at any cost. As the walls close around him, Tommy finds middle ground with his tormentors though he soon learns that, although independence might be close, it would come at a significant cost.

Fresh and unsettling, Good Boy is an intense and unforgettable genre-bending thriller that unfolds like a dark fairy tale. This latest from Academy Award–nominated director Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi, TIFF ’19), is produced by legendary filmmakers Jeremy Thomas, Ewa Piaskowska, and Jerzy Skolimowski (who has had several films at the Festival as a director including Four Nights with Anna, TIFF ’08; 11 Minutes, TIFF ’15; and EO, TIFF ’22). Flanked by an incredible ensemble of performances by Graham, Riseborough, and Boon, Good Boy is written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid and shot by Michał Dymek (EO, TIFF ’22, The Girl with the Needle, TIFF ’24). By raising uncomfortable questions about freedom, this daring film challenges our expectations about what we accept as normal.

DOROTA LECH

Content advisory: drug use, physical abuse, sexual content, strobing effects