Festivals: Good Boy (2025) by Jan Komasa: Captivity, Control, and the Anatomy of Punishment
- dailyentertainment95
- Sep 5
- 3 min read
A Delinquent Turned “Pet”
Nineteen-year-old Tommy lives recklessly on the streets of the UK—booze, drugs, and chaos define his nights with a rowdy group of friends. His charming bravado shields the damage he inflicts on others. But after a drunken night, he’s kidnapped by a mysterious stranger, Chris (Stephen Graham), who chains him like a dog in his basement.
Chris is no ordinary captor: a seemingly altruistic family man, he forces Tommy to confront his past crimes through disturbing replays of his drunken violence, news reports of fatal accidents, and psychological degradation. Alongside Chris are his wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), a woman haunted by PTSD, and their son, who complicate Tommy’s confinement with moments of connection, temptation, and uneasy trust.
The film unfolds as a perverse therapy session: a young man’s path to redemption refracted through cruelty, control, and blurred lines between punishment and care.
Why to Recommend This Film: A Captivity Thriller with Bite
Why to watch this movie:
Stephen Graham at his most commanding — Delivers a chilling, layered performance as Chris, a captor oscillating between benevolence and brutality.
Anson Boon’s raw intensity — Captures Tommy’s arc from arrogant delinquent to broken captive, giving the story emotional heft.
Andrea Riseborough’s complexity — Brings nuance as a woman whose trauma mirrors and refracts the story’s core themes.
Kubrickian echoes — The narrative consciously recalls A Clockwork Orange, modernized with themes of youth delinquency, rehabilitation, and coercion.
TIFF premiere buzz — Positioned as one of the standout psychological thrillers of the festival.
What is the Trend Followed: Morality Plays in Genre Disguise
Rehabilitation as horror — Explores the idea of forced moral awakening within a thriller framework.
The family-as-prison motif — Recent thrillers increasingly explore domestic captivity as a twisted mirror of intimacy.
Social critique through genre — Uses horror and suspense to ask: does punishment reform, or only reproduce cycles of harm?
Director’s Vision: Brutality with Purpose
Jan Komasa’s fascination with morality — Known for Corpus Christi, Komasa again explores characters at the edge of redemption and ruin.
Stylized realism — Juxtaposes grimy UK nightlife with the stark interior of Chris’s house, blurring social commentary with genre spectacle.
Emotional provocation — Designs the film to be discomforting, questioning whether captivity and cruelty can create change.
Moral ambiguity — Refuses to let audiences neatly side with captor or captive, pushing them into the discomfort of gray zones.
Themes: Punishment, Redemption, and Trauma
Youthful recklessness — Tommy embodies the destructive energy of unchecked privilege and irresponsibility.
Punishment vs. therapy — The film asks whether Chris’s methods are moral justice or sadistic delusion.
Family as fractured unit — Kathryn and their son become part of Tommy’s “rehabilitation,” suggesting everyone in the house is trapped by grief and trauma.
Cycles of violence — Suggests that attempts at reformation can perpetuate the same cruelty they seek to cure.
Key Success Factors: Performance and Provocation
Acting powerhouse — Graham and Boon provide intensity and range, creating a riveting captor–captive dynamic.
Emotional ambiguity — Keeps viewers unsure whether they’re witnessing justice, sadism, or something disturbingly in-between.
Thematic boldness — A willingness to merge light torture horror with moral inquiry sets it apart from conventional thrillers.
Festival spotlight — TIFF premiere ensures strong critical visibility.
Awards & Nominations
World premiere: TIFF 2025, receiving immediate comparisons to A Clockwork Orange.
Awards prospects are strong given Komasa’s track record and the film’s bold thematic ambition.
Critics Reception: Disturbing and Divisive
Praised for Stephen Graham’s chilling authority and Anson Boon’s physical, emotional commitment.
Noted for its thematic ambition but also critiqued as predictable in structure, not fully reaching its emotional depth.
Seen as unsettling, thought-provoking, and occasionally heavy-handed—a film that shocks but divides.
Reviews: A Modern “Clockwork Orange”
Strengths: Strong performances, provocative themes, unsettling atmosphere, and psychological tension.
Weaknesses: Predictable narrative beats, disjointed pacing, and occasional heavy-handedness in its message.
Consensus: A disturbing captivity thriller that forces audiences to wrestle with morality, cruelty, and redemption, even if its answers remain elusive.
Release Timeline
TIFF 2025: World premiere.
International rollout: Expected late 2025 into 2026, with awards-season positioning likely given cast and subject matter.
Movie Trend: Redemptive Horror-Drama
The film reflects a recent surge of genre films using horror or thriller frameworks to explore moral dilemmas, punishment, and social justice—gritty stories where violence becomes a metaphor for broken systems of rehabilitation.
Social Trend: Cycles of Trauma and Correction
The story resonates with broader cultural debates around justice, reform, and whether punitive systems heal or perpetuate harm. The film mirrors society’s ambivalence about how to treat delinquency—through care, punishment, or something disturbingly in between.
Final Verdict: Disturbance as Reflection
Good Boy is a provocative thriller that blends captivity horror with moral allegory. Jan Komasa delivers a film that unsettles as much as it provokes, powered by Stephen Graham’s ferocity and Anson Boon’s raw vulnerability. Not flawless, but gripping and divisive—the kind of film that lingers in debate long after the credits roll.
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