The Good Boy (2025) - 7/10

Tommy (Anson Boon) is not a good boy. He’s a coked up prick. Unpredictable on the surface and zero depth. Chris (Stephen Graham), well he’s something altogether different. Living in somewhat solitude in a big country pile with his, at first near catatonic wife, Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) and their young son, Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). Our introductions to this distinctly unnerving house are carried out as Chris hires Rina (Monika Frajczyk), after she signs a waiver and relinquishes her phone, to help around the house and assist with some “non-standard tasks”. That being to keep schtum about the young bloke chained up in the basement, Tommy. Chris wants to rehabilitate him, Tommy is shall we say, resistant. Everyone’s damaged here. Everyone has a past, but Chris and Kathryn’s appears particularly dark. Are they trying to fix and start over or do they have something planned for their house guest. The pacing and fluctuating unease is gripping and surprisingly less bleak than you’d imagine. It helps that everyone’s brilliant, in a tight cast that keeps the story carefully controlled. It’s expected of Graham and Riseborough, but Boon is a revelation… but there’s some things you can’t control. It plays with its audiences emotions a little predictably and the housekeepers role is a little thin, but it does have an enough twisted twists to make it enjoyable all the way to its oddly satisfying finale.

7/10