GFF 2026: The Good Boy
Anson Boon plays a 19-year-old hoodlum who receives some unconventional rehabilitation from Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough in this strange and thought-provoking drama
The question of today’s angry young men and how to wean them off the internet’s darkest corners was the subject of Adolescence, 2025’s Stephen Graham-fronted hit. This year’s movie equivalent (with Graham down to top billing) is The Good Boy, a much more fantastical spin on the premise that nonetheless remains rooted in human quirks, weaknesses, and strange capacities for love.
Tommy (Anson Boon) spends his 19th year wreaking havoc on his local community, live-streaming his drunken exploits with his friends. One night, separated and intoxicated, a shadowy figure bundles him away – and Tommy awakes chained in a basement, with a seemingly ordinary family eager to show him the error of his ways and retrain him for entry into society. This vigilante Clockwork Orange set-up, however, crumbles as father Chris (Graham), mother Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen) reveal that their idea of happy and perfect family has many, many rough edges – and that the lengths they will go for the illusion, including hiring a new maid with perilous immigration status (Monika Frajczyk), do not give them much moral high ground over Tommy and his companions.
Boon’s performance finds sympathy in Tommy’s journey without sanding down his horrible behaviour, and his growing understanding of people and their complications is the most moving aspect of The Good Boy. Graham’s understated everyman and Riseborough’s just-off-kilter portrait of normal are equally captivating, especially as events spiral towards the weird. Filled with thought-provoking twists and quandaries, Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid’s script never picks easy answers.
The Good Boy had its UK premiere at Glasgow Film Festival and is released 20 Mar by Signature Entertainment