Good Boy
Film poster
Directed by	Jan Komasa
Written by	Bartek Bartosik Naqqash Khalid
Produced by	Jeremy Thomas Ewa Piaskowska [pl] Jerzy Skolimowski
Starring	Stephen Graham Andrea Riseborough Anson Boon Kit Rakusen
Cinematography	Michał Dymek
Edited by	Agnieszka Glińska
Music by	Abel Korzeniowski
Production companies	Recorded Picture Company Skopia Film
Distributed by	Signature Entertainment
Release dates	5 September 2025 (2025-09-05) (TIFF) 20 March 2026 (2026-03-20) (United Kingdom)
Running time	110 minutes[1]
Countries	Poland United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	$1,185,371[2]

Good Boy (also known as Heel)^[3] is a 2025 black comedy thriller film directed by Jan Komasa. It stars Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, and Kit Rakusen. It tells the story of a married couple who abduct a 19-year-old criminal and try various methods to rehabilitate him. The film had its world premiere at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025.

19-year-old Tommy is a foul-mouthed, drug-abusing delinquent with a penchant for antisocial behaviour and violence, both of which he records and uploads to his Instagram Profile Page. During a night out with his girlfriend Gabby, Tommy becomes heavily intoxicated and is separated from his friends. He is then abducted on the street by an unknown assailant.

Macedonian national Rina meets with a man named Chris to interview for a housekeeping job. Chris invites her to his large countryside home where she signs a non-disclosure agreement and undergoes a tour of the house, meeting Chris's reclusive wife Kathryn and their 10-year-old son Jonathan. While viewing the cellar downstairs, Rina discovers an unconscious Tommy chained to the wall. She attempts to flee, but Chris stops her and says he is aware of her past and precarious visa situation. Following a threat to call his contact in the Home Office, Rina agrees to take the job.

Tommy is revealed to have been in the house for some time. He regularly antagonises and threatens Chris, and attempts to reason with Rina for help when she works in the cellar. Chris forces Tommy to watch educational films starring Chris and his family, as well as clips of Tommy's antics uploaded online. Tommy maintains his abusive demeanour, to which Chris responds with kindness and lectures, claiming that he is trying to help Tommy become a better person, though he shows no reluctance in beating or tasing Tommy whenever he resists his captivity, such as when he throws his urine-soaked clothes at Kathryn.

As time passes, Kathryn begins giving Tommy books to read and the family allows him to watch movies with them. His temperament calms and he slowly builds a rapport with everyone in the household, especially Jonathan. After celebrating Tommy's birthday with a picnic, Chris moves him to a room upstairs, having constructed a ceiling-mounted track system to which Tommy's chain is attached, allowing him to move throughout the house. However, Chris has also inserted combination locks throughout the track to control Tommy's movement and prevent him from going downstairs unsupervised.

Rina confides in the family that she is being followed. They invite her to move into the house. At Tommy's urging, Chris employs his and Rina's assistance in arranging a romantic dinner for Kathryn in the back garden. Though this is a success, Tommy steals a knife from the kitchen drawer as the family is distracted and hides it in a potted plant. Upstairs, while Chris thanks him for his help, Tommy asks why he in particular was abducted. Chris does not give a straight answer. Tommy states he is aware that his room once belonged to someone else.

One day, when Chris goes on a drive, a gang of men break into the house seeking Rina. She agrees to leave with them, though before doing so she whispers the code to the locks in Tommy's ear. Tommy then attacks the men but they overpower him. When Chris returns, he thanks Tommy for protecting 'their' family, and reveals his plan to install a security system and motion detectors on the property. That night, Tommy opens the combination locks and sneaks downstairs, taking the hidden knife and using it to pry his chain from the track. Chris comes down with a handgun, but Tommy attacks from behind and disarms him, after which Kathryn arrives. Tommy asserts he will never be the person who used to live in his room and demands to go free. Heartbroken in her husband's arms, Kathryn agrees to let Tommy leave.

Having returned home, Tommy does not admit to police that he was abducted and claims he went away with his friend 'Jonathan'. He encounters Gabby in a nightclub, heavily intoxicated from drugs and alcohol. She confesses the next day that she wishes she could 'disappear', and Tommy asks if she trusts him. When she assents, he incapacitates her with chloroform and takes her to the gate of Chris's home. After Tommy rings the buzzer and waits anxiously, the gate opens and he walks towards the house with Gabby in his arms.

• Stephen Graham as Chris
• Andrea Riseborough as Kathryn
• Anson Boon as Tommy
• Kit Rakusen as Jonathan
• Monika Frajczyk [pl] as Rina
• Savannah Steyn as Gabby
• Mila Jankowska as Lindsay
• Callum Booth-Ford as Ste
• Noah Valentine as Jack
• Noah Manzoor as Mikey
• Maciej Stepniak as Klement
• Jessica Johnson as a police officer
• Austin Haynes as a young boy
• Helena Calvert as Helen

Producer Jerzy Skolimowski approached director Jan Komasa with the film's screenplay while the latter was promoting his 2019 film, Corpus Christi. The screenplay, originally written in Polish and set in Warsaw, was adapted into English and set in Yorkshire to appeal to a wider audience. It is Komasa's first English-language film.^[4]

Principal photography took place in Yorkshire and Warsaw, and was completed in October 2024.^[5][6]

A promotional clip was released on 3 September 2025.^[7] The film had its world premiere in the Centerpiece section of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on 5 September 2025.^[4][8] It was also screened at the BFI London Film Festival and the Rome Film Festival.^[9][10]

The film will be released by Kino Świat in Poland. In November 2025, it was acquired for distribution by Magnolia Pictures in the United States; Signature in the United Kingdom and Ireland; X Verleih in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; Minerva Pictures in Italy; YouPlanet/Caramel Films in Spain; Sundae in Japan; 18k Films in the Benelux; Front Row Films in the Middle East; Pris Audiovisuais in Portugal; Shaw Organisation in Singapore; Beta Film in Bulgaria; The Film Group in Greece; Catchplay in Taiwan; and Bir Film in Turkey.^[11]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 62 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Wrestling with provocative questions about rehabilitation and having a maniacally fun time while it's at it, Heel is a nutty thriller that has a surprising amount of method to its madness."^[12] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 63 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[13]

Damon Wise of Deadline wrote, "Like an early Yorgos Lanthimos, the strangeness of the premise does a lot of heavy lifting, but the performers literally bring character to what might easily have been a one-note movie."^[14] Christopher Llewellyn Reed of Film Festival Today noted that the film "pleasantly surprises in the way it spins out its story threads," adding that "there is more to Tommy than we originally thought, and more to the movie, too," even if "some of it strains credulity."^[15] Pavel Snapkou of Showbiz by PS described the film as "an insanely interesting story with a rather sad ending," praising its "fantastic" setup and performances while arguing that the finale "throws away everything that was built in the first half of the film".^[16]

• Good Boy at IMDb