Good Boy

The narrative progression leads the protagonist through a claustrophobic space that is not only physical but psychological: isolation, coercion, humiliation, and the tension between the drive for freedom and the force of control intertwine constantly.

Good Boy blurs the boundaries of genre — psychological thriller, social drama, allegorical experiment. In its own way, the film faintly evokes Kubrickian suggestions — both for the geometric coldness of the spaces and for the cruelty that stems from order — while maintaining the tone of a dark fairy tale, where the “dark place” becomes a metaphor for existential emptiness.

Komasa’s visual construction and direction play on the opposition between inside and outside, light and shadow, restriction and breath: the domestic space turns into a spiritual prison. The images do not always show horror directly but suggest it through glances, noises, silences.

One of the film’s merits lies in its ambiguity, leaving motives and roles suspended: it is not easy to determine who is the “villain” and who the “savior.” Chris believes he acts for the good, to correct youthful dissolution, but his method is perverse — and the line between salvation and violence becomes fragile.

Tommy is not portrayed as a “monster,” but as a disoriented boy, shaped by absence, desire, and unhealed wounds. The film suggests that extreme behavior — drugs, rebellion, violence — does not arise from moral vice but from radical loneliness.
This also applies to Nina, the housekeeper, who struggles with her own family issues.

The boy’s imprisonment becomes the extreme symbol of what many adolescents experience: feeling trapped in a life without direction, without authentic guidance. It also mirrors the emptiness that can lead to reckless acts. In this sense, Good Boy does not simply condemn behavior but explores its inner origins.

Only in the finale does the film’s full vision unfold, and the outcome proves surprising. Though not an “educational film” in the traditional sense, Good Boy has an instructive dimension. It invites reflection on the dangers of not listening, on the mistake of reducing parenthood to mere biological generation — letting children grow up without rules or ethical orientation — and, conversely, on the perils of excessive control and discipline that neglect the importance of dialogue, attentive observation, and genuine relationship. The film reveals that despair, escape, and resorting to drugs are not merely “wrong choices” but often desperate reactions from those who feel unseen, unloved, and unrecognized.

Ultimately, Good Boy emerges not only as a film of social critique or unease but as an instrument of observation — a lens that penetrates the blind zones of contemporary adolescence and confronts them with adult omissions. From this perspective, the film acquires a paradoxical pedagogical value: not because it offers answers, but because it forces us to face the questions society tends to ignore. It is a film that should enter schools — not as a moral lesson but as an exercise in awareness. By showing vulnerability as a shared condition, Good Boy tears through the hypocrisy that often hovers over educational discourse — the one that artificially separates school, family, and state, as if they were not part of the same collective body.