Good Boy / Heel
What a lovely family. They should open a B&B.
Jan Komasa continues to explore radicalism in people with his new film titled Good Boy. Unfortunately, it awkwardly shares its name with the horror film about a dog, so the second title of this film is Heel. And this is an insanely interesting story with a rather sad ending.
The film follows nineteen-year-old Tommy, a Brit who lives at the very bottom. The only things that matter to him are parties, drugs, and being the most unpleasant person you could ever meet. Trashy, racist, aggressive, a bully, a criminal, and just morally rotten. And one night after yet another party, Tommy is kidnapped by a family he doesn’t know, who keep him on a chain and try to put him on the path of rehabilitation — to make a man out of him. Tommy has to go through a difficult journey and make many important decisions during this process.
The setup of the story and the way it’s presented are simply fantastic. Komasa creates tension perfectly, asks a lot of questions that start to haunt you while watching, and vividly paints this picture of captivity and two polar extremes, two madmen — on one side Tommy, on the other the family of Chris, Kathryn and Jonathan. This unusual dynamic of a closed space, mystery and constant search for motives pulls you into the story completely, all against the backdrop of beautifully shot, very juicy cinematography.
It’s also important how from the very beginning the two main characters reveal themselves. Chris, played by Stephen Graham, and Tommy, played by Anson Boon, are absolutely fantastic in their roles. The chemistry between them is incredible — hatred, desperation, madness. Their performances are probably the two biggest highlights of the film, and they drag you into this story with your ears.
But, as you understand, at some point there’s a “but”.
Around the middle of the film, when it becomes clear that the story has to somehow end and reach some kind of ideological conclusion, all I could do was sit there and think: please, Jan Komasa, be smarter than me and don’t make the ending that I think is about to happen.
And unfortunately, that exact ending happens.
Not only is it very predictable, it absolutely throws away everything that was built in the first half of the film. In literally ten minutes, it creates a bunch of plot holes and leaves many important questions unanswered, dragging the whole thing down.
Because of the way Komasa chooses to end the story, the characters’ actions start to feel illogical. We again get this overly ambiguous theme where we don’t answer questions that really needed clear answers, or at least some solid guidance so the viewer could understand what the core idea is. In his 2025 film Anniversary, the same problem appeared — not going into specifics or not giving enough clues for the viewer to properly complete the story in their own head.
In the end, what we get is a story of circular abuse and two kinds of madness that for some reason merge into one chaotic whole, pulling a film that started as an insanely gripping thriller down to something disappointing and a bit dull.
This could have been so much more. And it’s painful that a final decision literally ruins the potential of this film. Despite that, the setup is strong enough and the performances are so good that it’s still worth a trip to the cinema. Just don’t be like me and don’t spend the entire second half praying for a miracle, because the miracle will not happen.
5/10
