If you’re after a disturbing tale that poses an intriguing debate, a new film has been added to streaming that is right up your street.
Good Boy, an offbeat comedy thriller from filmmaker Jan Komasa and writers Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, was released in cinemas earlier this year, but is now available to stream on Prime Video, where it’s rapidly rising on the most-watched charts.
The film follows a married couple, played by Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough, who are seemingly normal on the outside but harbouring a secret behind closed doors: locked in their basement is a 19-year-old criminal, and they are attempting to rehabilitate him over time.
Graham’s character almost works as a spin on the kindly dad he played in Netflix megahit Adolescence, about a couple whose world is turned upside down when their 13-year-old son is arrested for murdering a schoolmate. In many ways, Good Boy is like Adolescence told through a Black Mirror lens.
Good Boy – also known in some territories as Heel – has a striking performance from rising star Anson Boon, who plays the volatile youth locked up in the basement. He previously played Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten in Danny Boyle’s miniseries Pistol, and also stars in Guy Ritchie’s Paramount+ series MobLand.
Interestingly, the film’s screenplay was presented to director Komasa by its producer, the Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, the man behind films Moonlighting and EO. Komasa’s previous film was the acclaimed 2019 drama Corpus Christi.
Good Boy currently has a 97 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes from 77 reviews.
It’s been a busy decade for Graham. The actor has appeared in two Venom films, the film adaptation of Matilda the Musical, Peaky Blinders film The Immortal Man and Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere, in which he played the musician’s father.
He’ll next star alongside married couple Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in psychological thriller Bunker, from The Father director Florian Zeller, opposite Tom Hanks in Greyhound 2, and Ibelin, a dramatised version of 2024 documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.
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The film tells the real-life story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy whose parents, upon his passing, discover he lived a double life as a hero to many around the globe due to his online persona in the role-playing game World of Warcraft.