Lede

A film about social breakdown decides the best cure is abduction, moral theatre and enough opening logos to make the actual story feel late for its own funeral.

Hermit Off Script

The first thing The Good Boy really gives you is not the film but the parade of companies congratulating themselves for existing, complete with animation, then text, then what feels like one final bow just in case you had not yet grasped that many adults were involved in funding this nervous breakdown. After that, the film drops straight into the now-familiar bundle of teenage decay – booze, drugs, bullying, swagger, and that particular brand of half-baked bravado that adults love to package as the whole state of youth. And that is where it becomes useful, if not entirely honest. Because yes, the official setup is a 19-year-old wrecking-ball called Tommy, surrounded by parties and violence, before Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough arrive with the world’s most deranged parent-teacher conference and chain him in a basement for a rehabilitation experiment. But what interested me more was the sales pitch around it all: this strange little fantasy that social rot can be diagnosed through panic and cured through control. That is exactly the kind of story authoritarian minds adore – take a messy society, point at its worst behaviour, then pretend cruelty is discipline wearing a tie. And no, this is not a parenting manual, unless someone has decided social care should now be run by hostage negotiators. By the time a teenager is already deep in that swamp, the miracle cure is not theatrical punishment. It starts much earlier – books, curiosity, attention, mystery, a mind trained to look beyond the next chemical shortcut. As cinema, it works well enough. As a social diagnosis, it is cracked glass. And with an Unlimited pass now, half these mid-range releases feel less like cinema and more like streaming with upholstery. Adolescence hit harder because the form matched the panic. This one sometimes feels like prestige captivity with popcorn.

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The Good Boy | Official Exclusive Trailer

The Good Boy mistakes captivity for a cure to teenage rot

The Good Boy follows Tommy, a volatile 19-year-old wrapped up in drugs, parties and violence. After being separated from his friends on a drunken night out, he is abducted and wakes up chained in the basement of a remote Yorkshire home, where a strange family subjects him to a forced and deeply disturbing “rehabilitation” meant to turn him into a “good boy”.

Cast and credits

Director: Jan Komasa
Writers: Bartek Bartosik, Naqqash Khalid
Genre: Mystery thriller, crime drama
Main cast: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, Kit Rakusen
Composer: Abel Korzeniowski
Production company/studio: Recorded Picture Company, Skopia Film
Runtime: 110 minutes
Release year and platform: 2025 festival debut, 2026 UK theatrical release via Signature Entertainment, released in the US as Heel

What does not make sense

• A film that wants to examine damaged youth opens by marinating in the exact spectacle of excess it claims to critique.
• The adults are presented as the corrective force, yet their chosen method is kidnapping, chaining and psychological coercion, which is not exactly a glowing advert for maturity.
• The story flirts with social diagnosis, but keeps reducing teenage collapse to a bundle of booze, drugs, violence and posturing.
• It wants the audience to weigh ethics while handing them a premise that already looks like moral panic in a trench coat.
• It is sold as pure cinema, yet it sits right on that modern border where the sofa is quietly winning.

Sense check / The numbers

1. Tommy is explicitly described in the official synopsis as a 19-year-old hooligan living in “drugs, parties, and violence” before he is abducted and chained in a family basement. [Rotten Tomatoes]
2. The film runs 110 minutes, and UK cinema listings were carrying it as a 15 certificate when checked on 23 March 2026. [Picturehouse, FACT]
3. TIFF listed Good Boy as a Poland – United Kingdom title, 110 minutes long, and a world premiere in 2025. [TIFF]
4. The BFI London Film Festival screened Good Boy on 9 October 2025, while the US release used the title Heel and the UK release used The Good Boy. [BFI, Rotten Tomatoes]
5. Rotten Tomatoes showed 86 per cent from 59 critic reviews and 78 per cent from 50 plus audience ratings when checked. [Rotten Tomatoes]
6. Adolescence is a 2025 Netflix limited series about a 13-year-old accused of murdering a classmate, which is why your comparison lands on social panic rather than plot. [Netflix, Tudum]

The sketch

Scene 1: Sponsored by everyone except restraint
Panel description + dialogue:
A cinema screen is clogged with animated production logos while the audience grows older in their seats. The actual film title waits backstage looking offended.
Viewer: “Has the movie started?”
Friend: “Only if corporate vanity counts as plot.”

Scene 2: Democracy, according to idiots
Panel description + dialogue:
A teenager stands in a storm cloud labelled booze, drugs, while solemn adults point from a safe distance behind a sign marked “civilisation”.
Adult 1: “Look what freedom does.”
Adult 2: “Excellent. Now chain it in the basement.”

Scene 3: Unlimited pass, limited difference
Panel description + dialogue:
A cinema seat and a sofa face each other like rival landlords while a viewer holds an Unlimited pass in the middle.
Cinema seat: “I am an event.”
Sofa: “You are a subscription with leg room.”

What to watch, not the show

• The old adult habit of mistaking youth disorder for a grand civilisational collapse.
• The market value of moral panic, especially when it can be dressed as prestige thriller.
• The fantasy that punishment looks deeper when it is wrapped in art-house lighting.
• The streaming era blur where mid-budget cinema increasingly survives on venue, not medium.
• The failure of early education, reading and curiosity-building long before crisis becomes spectacle.
• The political hunger for simple stories in which control always looks cleaner than care.

The Hermit take

It is sharp enough to provoke and crooked enough to irritate.
The real horror is how quickly adults mistake control for wisdom.

Keep or toss

Keep / Toss
Keep the performances, the unease and the nerve to prod a rotten subject. Toss the smug little fantasy that captivity is moral seriousness.

Sources

• Signature Entertainment title page for UK release framing and official sales pitch: https://signature-entertainment.co.uk/distribution/titles/good-boy-the
• Rotten Tomatoes listing for synopsis, runtime, release details and review scores: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/heel
• Picturehouse and FACT listings for runtime and UK cinema certificate details: https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00017713/the-good-boy and https://www.fact.co.uk/whats-on/the-good-boy
• Toronto International Film Festival listing for world premiere and 110 minute runtime: https://www.tiff.net/films/good-boy
• BFI London Film Festival listing for the 9 October 2025 screening: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=20251009
• Netflix official page and Tudum article for Adolescence synopsis and series details: https://www.netflix.com/title/81756069 and https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/adolescence-release-date-news
• The Guardian review for the film’s retraining premise and critical framing: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/09/good-boy-review-stephen-graham-and-andrea-riseborough-turn-nasty-in-kubrickian-absurdist-nightmare