After scrolling through about a mile of credits listing all the production companies involved two names pop up on the screen, Jeremy Thomas and Jerzy Skolimowski, and suddenly you sit up and take notice since both have the kind of pedigree you don't find too often in so-called commercial movies these days. "The Good Boy" (aka "Heel") is the new film from director Jan Komasa who also made "Corpus Christie" and it could best be described as a deeply unsettling horror-comedy about a demented do-gooder, (a terrific Stephen Graham) who kidnaps a sociopathic youth, (Anson Boon, also superb), and keeps him chained up in the cellar of his country house, aided and abetted by his initially near-comatose wife (Andrea Riseborough), 10 year old son (Kit Rakusen) and illegal immigrant Monika Frajczyk who comes in to clean two days a week.
Where "The Good Boy" differs from other films of its kind is in what lies behind Graham's actions. He's no ordinary psychopath out to torture and murder his victim but to rehabilitate him. "No-one is ever harmed in this house" he says at the beginning but he's just as mad, bad and dangerous to know as any serial killer and while Boon's Tommy might be a first cousin to Malcom McDowell's Alex in "A Clockwork Orange", like Alex, it isn't long before your sympathies shift to him. He may be something of a monster but then so too is Graham and it's clear from the start that this brilliant film is never going to provide any easy answers. Yes, it may seem far-fetched at times but given the world we are living in, perhaps not that far-fetched after all.
