THE GOOD BOY : Tuesday 9th June 2026.

As part of this years Sydney Film Festival I saw 'THE GOOD BOY', aka 'HEEL' at my local independent movie theatre earlier this week. This Polish and UK Co-Produced black comedy thriller film is Directed by Jan Komasa, whose previous feature film output include 'Suicide Room' in 2011, 'Warsaw 44' in 2014, 'Corpus Christi' in 2019, 'The Hater' in 2022 and 'Anniversary' in 2025. This film is Komasa's first English language feature. It had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September last year, was released in the USA in late March, has received generally positive critical reviews, and has so far grossed US$1.2M at the Box Office. The film goes on general release here in Australia on 2nd July. 

The film opens following the extremely anti-social behaviour of 19-year-old Tommy (Anson Boon). He is a foul-mouthed, drug-abusing, beer swilling delinquent hooligan with a penchant for random acts of extreme violence - all of which he records and uploads to his social media pages for all the world to see. During a night out with his girlfriend Gabby (Savannah Steyn), Tommy becomes heavily drunk and stoned, can barely walk and later becomes separated from his friends, after his bender late at night. He is then abducted on the street by an unknown figure.

Macedonian national Rina (Monika Frajczyk) meets with a man named Chris (Stephen Graham) in a cafe to interview for a housekeeping job. After a series of fairly simple questions Chris invites her to his large isolated countryside home where she signs a non-disclosure agreement and is taken for a tour of the house, meeting Chris's reclusive wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) and their ten-year-old son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). While viewing the cellar downstairs, Rina observes an unconscious Tommy chained to the ceiling. She attempts to leave, but Chris stops her and says he is aware of her past and uncertain visa situation. Following a threat to call his contact in the Home Office, Rina agrees to take the job - working two days a week on a Monday and Thursday.

Tommy is revealed to have been in the house for some time. He regularly antagonises and threatens Chris, and attempts to reason with Rina for help when she works in the cellar either loading up the washing machine or mopping the stone floor. Chris forces Tommy to watch educational films starring Chris and his family, as well as clips of Tommy's anti-social capers or violent attacks uploaded online. Tommy maintains his abusive attitude to which Chris responds with kindness and lectures, claiming that he is trying to help Tommy become a better person, though he shows no reluctance in beating or tasering Tommy whenever he resists his captivity, such as when he throws his urine-soaked clothes at Kathryn's face. Following this latter episode Chris severely beats Tommy with a Police extendable baton multiple times shouting out 'bad boy' with every blow. 

As time progresses and Tommy's manner starts to become more passive, Kathryn begins giving him books to read and the family allows him to watch movies with them. His temperament calms and he slowly builds a civil rapport with everyone in the household, especially Jonathan. After celebrating Tommy's birthday with a picnic out on the Yorkshire moors, Chris moves him to a room upstairs, having constructed a ceiling-mounted track system to which Tommy's chain is attached, allowing him to move throughout the house. However, Chris has also inserted combination locks throughout the track to control Tommy's movement and prevent him from venturing downstairs unsupervised. 

Later Rina advises the family that she thinks she is being followed, and fears for her safety. They invite her to move into the house, which she does. At Tommy's urging, Chris employs his and Rina's assistance in arranging a romantic dinner for Kathryn in the back garden. Though this is a success, Tommy is able to steal a knife from the kitchen drawer as the family is distracted in the garden, and hides it in a pot plant. Upstairs, while Chris thanks him for his help, Tommy asks why he in particular was abducted. Chris does not give a straight answer. Tommy states he is aware that his room once belonged to someone else, and asks who. 

One day, when Chris is out for a drive, a gang of three men break into the house seeking Rina. She agrees to leave with them, though before doing so she whispers the four digit combination code to the locks in Tommy's ear. Tommy then attacks the men but they overpower him, and beat him up. When Chris returns, he thanks Tommy for protecting 'their' family, and reveals his plan to install a security system and motion detectors on the property, which he says that Tommy can help him with the installation. That night, Tommy gingerly opens the combination locks and sneaks downstairs, taking the hidden knife and using it to pry his chain from the track. Chris, awakened, comes down with a handgun, but Tommy attacks from behind and disarms him, after which Kathryn arrives. Tommy says that he will never be the person who used to live in his room and demands to go free. Heartbroken in her husband's arms, Kathryn agrees to let Tommy leave. He does so walking out into the night, later collapsing in the middle of a deserted stretch of road. 

Having returned home, after two months away, Tommy does not admit to the interviewing Police Officer (Jessica Johnson) that he was abducted and claims he went away with his friend 'Jonathan'. The Police Officer says that a friend, Gabby, reported him as a missing person, while his mother admitted texting him twice, but as he never responded she gave up. Later he encounters Gabby in a nightclub, heavily wasted from drugs and alcohol. The next day Gabby pulls up at Tommy's house and they drive off with Tommy driving. They park up in a remote area and she says that she wishes she could 'disappear'. Tommy asks if she trusts him. When she says yes, he incapacitates her with chloroform, torches the car and carries her to the gate of Chris's home. After Tommy rings the buzzer and waits anxiously, the gate opens and he walks towards the house down the long driveway carrying Gabby in his arms, with Chris, Kathryn and Jonathan standing at the door to welcome him back. 

'The Good Boy' is a blacker than black dark comedy psychological thriller that is teetering on the brink of horror, given the opening scenes of Tommy running amok snorting, drinking, punching, kicking, fucking, pissing, arguing and yelling his way through a single night of obnoxious excess, to Chris who keeps his quarry chained to the ceiling for weeks and who is not afraid to wield his own form of justice with a baton, a taser, or a discovered packet of cigarettes belonging to his ten year old son. The performances of Boon, Graham and Riseborough are all top notch and they inhabit their roles with a real sense of believability and realism. Whilst there are certain similarities here with Stanley Kubrick's seminal 1971 film 'A Clockwork Orange', here Director Jan Komasa has substituted the institutionalised rehabilitation for the individuals rehab, and in doing so has delivered us a film that poses the question of 'nature over nurture', the power of social media and the hold it has over young teenagers and young adults that you'll be debating long after the end credits have rolled. 

'The Good Boy' or 'Heel' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-