Good Boy



Sigrid is just a young, sort of aimless psychology student looking for love. And she thinks she might have found it in Christian. He’s young, handsome, soft spoken, polite, and just so happens to be a multimillionaire with an awesome house…and he’s interested in her! Frankly, Sigrid’s roommate thinks she’s hit the bloody jackpot. But Sigrid’s also found out something quite unsettling about Christian that’s giving her pause. He lives with his friend Frank, who dresses and behaves like Christian’s pet dog. However, despite being royally squigged out by this turn of events, Christian does seem like a really nice guy, so Sigrid does her best to be as understanding of their little situation-ship as possible. But the more she’s around their strange dynamic, the more she starts to get hints that their odd little arrangement may not be as benign as she was originally led to believe.


Clearly.

Good Boy is a Norwegian horror/thriller from 2022, and won the Best Film award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023. So, even with its weird-ass premise, I was at least 90% sure that it wouldn’t outright suck, which is kinda what I was aiming for for the last film of this month. And thankfully I was right: The movie doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s actually very good, all things considered. But it still had enough dings in it to keep me from really liking it as much as I was hoping I would.


Though it was close.

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way: For the most part I actually did really like the movie. Overall, I think  it’s a very solid film. All of the acting is extremely on point. It sounds great. It looks quite beautiful, sporting some very excellent cinematography. It’s well lit (isn’t it sad that I feel the need to mention that?) Hell, even the film’s pacing is near perfect, slowly and consistently ramping up the mystery, tension and dread until the final act. So at least technically speaking, the film is stellar, and I’m relieved to not have to complain about things like poor lighting or camera placement for once. Considering the stuff I usually watch, it’s really a nice change of pace.



Instead, the parts that I had problems with lied within some of the plotting elements. For instance, Sigrid’s friend/roommate is perhaps the worst friend/roommate in all of existence who is not actively trying to kill her. When Sigrid comes home all creeped out by her date’s “dog”, and perfectly willing to scrap any hope she had for that relationship, it’s her roommate that talks her out of her perfectly reasonable reaction by basically telling her “Oh, but he’s cute and has a lot of money and shit. Who cares if he’s eccentric?” And the movie tries to play this off as if it’s Sigrid who shouldn’t be so judge-y judge-y about the weird guy and his even weirder pet man-dog. But let’s be real. The way her roommate phrases the whole thing tells me that she’s basing this sudden judgement free zone on the fact that Christian supposedly has a lot of cash. Something tells me that if Christian was just ugly or *shock!* poor she would be singing a very different tune. Because we all know that if you have money and do weird shit, then you’re just eccentric. But if you’re poor and do the same shit, then you’re just a crazy nutter who should be put on a list somewhere. AND THEN, (!) after she’s guilted her into giving the oddball a second chance and Sigrid’s starting to get attached, she then proceeds to tell Sigrid that she needs to play hard to get. And even Sigrid seems confused by all this blatant bi-polar levels of advice she’s being given, but she follows it anyway because…reasons, I guess. I don’t know. She was on the right track from the start and then just let this chick casually talk her out of it. Like I said, there’s some plotting issues. I just feel kinda bad for Sigrid though, because she did exactly what was suggested to her and it’s sort of implied by the end of the movie that her roommate never bothered to come look for her, or even call the police to send someone else to go look for her missing ass afterwards. So fuck that chick, she sucks.


This woman is the WOOOOORST!

But poor Sigrid sort of suffers from some bad plotting too, so I can’t blame all my issues on her horny, idiotic roommate. But I think that’s mostly because, after doing a stellar job of progressive world building and steadily ramping up the tension and creep factor, once the movie hit the third act it sort of feels like it ran out of all its original ideas and dove head first into the Horror Cliche Factory. Because that’s the point where things start to get annoyingly predictable and perfectly smart people start acting real stupid real fast. And I won’t say exactly what happens in case you want to watch it. But just know it’s the kind of thing that involves perfectly capable people suddenly making blatantly illogical decisions that anyone with any common sense would know are going to put them in danger, just so that the movie can have the ending that it wants. It’s just a crying shame. And it’s the main reason why I called this a good movie and not a great one. Because while the ending is fine, it’s also the kind that will likely make you roll your eyes… probably more than once.


No! Not that way! The other way! You were doing so GOOD five seconds ago! *weeps*

So, in short, I liked it. The Good Boy is, overall, a Good Movie. It’s just that it had a couple of plot-related irritations that kept me from really liking it. That, and part of me kinda feels like the story didn’t go far enough. Like, it felt like the movie was really ramping up to something particularly explosive or disturbing, but then started to hit the brakes right at the end and coasted to its finale. Everything still works of course, it just doesn’t feel quite as impactful as it easily could have been. But, oh well. Complaints aside, I think it’s still a pretty effective and very creepy horror/thriller. So if that’s the kind of movie you’re into, then give this one a watch. But if you’re looking for something a little less realistic and a little more SCARY scary, like with more blood or something like werewolves and junk, then definitely look into something else.

Good Boy (not to be confused with the similarly named film from 2003 or Good Boys from 2019) is available on a variety of streaming services.

Good Boy is also available on DVD and Bluray in certain territories, though it doesn’t appear to have a physical release in US territories yet.

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