Stephen Graham’s ‘chilling’ thriller with 87% on Rotten Tomatoes climbs up Amazon Prime top 10

Stephen Graham has given us fabulous performances recently, as ever, in the likes of Adolescence and A Thousand Blows – but one role getting fans’ attention takes him to new, darker depths.

The acclaimed actor can now be seen in the creepy-yet-compelling thriller The Good Boy, opposite Anson Boon and Andrea Riseborough, which has now dropped on Amazon Prime Video – and is already rising up the charts.

The Good Boy delves into the mind games that ensue when a seemingly respectable married couple (Emmy and Golden Globe winner Graham and Oscar nominee Riseborough) chain up an obnoxious tearaway youth, Tommy (Boon, MobLand), in their basement to teach him family values. As you do.

But as he undergoes training for his new role as a good boy, is he learning lessons or manipulating his captors? 

The film’s official synopsis promises that it ‘needs to be seen to be believed’ after it first screened at TIFF and then the London Film Festival in October 2025.

Now fans can judge for themselves if The Good Boy – formally known as Good Boy, which confused fans of the recent canine-starring horror – lives up to the twisted hype.

Signature Entertainment released this indie gem in UK and Irish cinemas earlier this year on March 20, ahead of its Prime debut.

It was later released in the US but under a different title – Heel.

The Jan Komasa-directed flick, written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, is currently sitting on an impressive 87% score from 71 critics on review aggregator platform Rotten Tomatoes.

Its performances have been praised as ‘doggone exceptional’ while the film itself has been compared to ‘an early Yorgos Lanthimos’, the master of the unusual and weird in his collaborations with Emma Stone.

‘It’s a sick premise that only gets sicker, but sometimes sickness in the cure. Good Boy is tonally unique,’ praised The Standard’s review, while Flickering Myth admired it as ‘relentlessly bleak ‘fun’ and twisty-turny throughout’.

The Good Boy has also been described as a ‘wickedly strange, psychologically rich fairy tale’ and simply ‘messed up’.

Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian called the movie a ‘Kubrickian absurdist nightmare’ in a four-star review, while Digital Spy’s five-star rave described a ‘compelling genre blend of dark thriller, absurdist comedy and thought-provoking drama that you won’t be able to look away from’.

While it’s a deeply uncomfortable premise, The Good Boy’s pitch-dark humour also keeps viewers on side, mining that bonkers scenario for its rich vein of insane comedy – be that from Boon’s swagger as Tommy or Graham’s quiet and polite menace as his ‘trainer’, Chris.

And let’s not forget about Chris and Kathryn’s young son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen) and his relaxed approach to it all, contrasting with the family’s new housekeeper Rina (Monika Frajczyk), desperate for a job at nearly any cost.

If the thought of a prim and proper Graham insisting ‘we’re not psychopaths!’ as he beats seven shades out of Boon’s xenophobic hooligan – who has been shown fornicating, weeing and vomiting in public on a night out – appeals, then The Good Boy is one for you.

Equally, you can strap in tight for a thrill ride with an unexpected ending that deviates from everything you might think you know of this movie.

The Good Boy is available to stream for Amazon Prime Video subscribers now