Director: Jan Komasa
Starring: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, Kit Rakusen
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 110 mins

The Good Boy is a psychological thriller about a married couple who abduct a 19-year-old criminal in an attempt to rehabilitate him. An English / Polish co-production, the film’s directed by Jan Komasa, best known for his religious drama Corpus Christi, which earned a Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough play Chris and Kathryn, the married couple in question, and the film opens with 19-year-old Tommy (Anson Boon) going for a particularly debauched night on the town in Yorkshire before he wakes up chained up in their basement. There, they make him watch videos of the ultraviolence he’s partaken in, in an attempt to make him see the error of his ways. Also living in the unconventional household is Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), an overly polite younger boy who seems a little terrified of his parents, raising the question whether they are indeed his parents or if he’s another victim.

Outside of an uncomfortable opening sequence (although likely by design), The Good Boy is a gripping thriller that raises lots of thought-provoking questions. Not only are we asked to question the character’s motives but what the state of affairs are like for the youth of today, and Komasa does this in a very icy manner with a jet black satirical undercurrent. In what’s very much a chamber piece that feels inspired by Michael Haneke and A Clockwork Orange, I was engrossed throughout by all the fully-fledged characters and I loved the sprinklings of black comedy, especially a scene where a character is made to smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. It all results in a deliberately bleak conclusion which I really liked, but it might prove challenging to others.

In a career that’s going from strength to strength, Stephen Graham is fantastic as Chris as another very complex father after his turn in Adolescence. On the surface, he looks like an ordinary and overly polite member of suburbia, but there’s a raging violence under that outrageous stick-on wig. Andrea Riseborough is also excellent as his more reserved wife, who comes out of her shell as the film progresses, as is Anson Boon as the charismatic thug. It’s testament to Boon’s performance that we grow to care for Tommy as the film progresses, despite his despicable and heinous acts of violence in his past.

It’s infrequent that Abel Korzeniowski scores a film, but he more than makes up for it with the quality of his work – his tremendous score for The Watchers really elevated what was an average horror film, for example. While the score doesn’t take centre stage in The Good Boy, what there is is evocative, although I’d say this is more of a minor work from him.

All in, The Good Boy has a lot going for it and I wonder if it will lead to Jan Komasa getting higher-profile work. This is a sharp and gripping piece of work that’s at its best when it’s a chamber piece inside Chris and Kathryn’s grand home – Komasa’s direction is less confident in the scenes away from it that bookend the film. It helps that there’s first-rate performances across the board, and the film’s worth watching for these alone. I don’t suspect The Good Boy is going to be a big box office hit with its soft release, but I highly recommend seeking it out.