We gave it a full five stars.
Stephen Graham’s dark British thriller The Good Boy is now available to watch at home. The plot follows 19-year-old Tommy (MobLand‘s Anson Boon), a teenage tearaway who wakes up from a night out to discover that he’s been chained up and held hostage by a creepy family.
Patriarch Chris (Graham) tells Tommy that they’re going to work on making him a better person, although the teen has no intention of going along with that and plans to escape. But with his movements being watched, and his captor’s cheerful demeanour hiding a violent streak, is there any way he can get out?
As of today, The Good Boy is available to be purchased or rented from outlets like Amazon or Apple. At the time of writing, it can be bought for £13.99 or rented for £9.99.
The Good Boy – not to be confused with Good Boy, last year’s hit horror movie featuring a dog trapped in a haunted house – was well received by critics, with a very impressive 88% positive score from 65 critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
That includes a glowing five-star review from Digital Spy, in which we called it “unlike anything you’ve seen” and a film that “delights in unfolding in ways you never expect”.
NYC Movie Guru called it “a provocative, gripping and refreshingly unpredictable psychological thriller”, while Flickering Myth described the film as “quietly deranged [and] thought-provoking” with “compellingly rich” performances from Graham and Boon.
The Observer compared it to A Clockwork Orange, while The Guardian wrote: “The movie’s ironies and cruelties clatter across the screen, but [director Jan] Komasa also allows the audience to consider who it is Chris really wants to train.”
If you can’t get enough of Stephen Graham, the actor’s “masterpiece” British drama This Is England was recently made available on streaming for free in the UK.
Co-starring Vicky McClure, the 2006 film written and directed by Shane Meadows is set in the 1980s, and follows 12-year-old Shaun Fields (Thomas Turgoose) as he becomes involved with a skinhead gang in the East Midlands.
The Good Boy is available to buy and rent now from outlets like Amazon or Apple.
