Locked in iron chains with a steel collar tight around his neck, Anson Boon captures pure, silent rage as Tommy on NETFLIX. Behind those hollow eyes lies a captive who has lost everything except the desire for revenge. But the disturbing secret behind why he refuses to scream or call for help in this exact frame is…

In the dim, airless basement of an isolated suburban home, a young man sits motionless. A heavy steel collar digs into the skin of his neck. Thick iron chains tether him to the wall and ceiling. His eyes are empty yet burning. He does not shout. He does not beg. He simply stares.

That image—Anson Boon as Tommy—has become one of the most unsettling promotional stills of the year. It belongs to Heel (also released in some territories as Good Boy or The Good Boy), the twisted psychological thriller from Academy Award-nominated director Jan Komasa that has now landed on Netflix and is rapidly becoming one of the platform’s most talked-about original offerings.

Boon, already known for intense turns in 1917, Pistol, and Guy Ritchie’s MobLand, delivers what many early viewers and critics are calling the darkest, most physically and emotionally demanding performance of his career. As Tommy, a 19-year-old London tearaway who thrives on drugs, street violence, and filming his own chaotic exploits for social media clout, Boon disappears completely into a character who begins the film as pure menace and ends it as something far more complicated—and far more dangerous.

The story is deceptively simple on the surface. One night, after a bender with friends and his girlfriend, Tommy is separated from the group and abducted. He wakes up in the basement of a large, well-appointed countryside house belonging to Chris (Stephen Graham), his near-spectral wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their eerily well-behaved young son Jonathan. The couple has decided, for reasons that slowly and disturbingly reveal themselves, that Tommy needs to be reformed. Their method is not therapy or the justice system. It is captivity, psychological pressure, forced routines, and a literal chain around the neck.

What follows is a pressure-cooker drama that mixes black comedy, moral ambiguity, and genuine dread. Tommy is no innocent victim. He is foul-mouthed, violent, and deeply selfish. Yet the family’s methods—treating him like a stray dog that must be house-trained—raise questions that linger long after the credits. Is this rehabilitation or revenge dressed up as morality? Is Chris a righteous avenger or a man playing God in his own private kingdom? And what happens to a young man when every outlet for his rage is systematically removed?

Boon’s performance is the film’s gravitational center. Much of the movie keeps him physically restricted. In early scenes he is chained tightly in the basement. Later, even when allowed upstairs, he remains leashed to a pulley system that limits his movement. The actor has spoken in interviews about the physical toll of filming almost every scene while wearing the collar and chains. The restriction becomes part of the performance. Unable to rely on the usual physicality of a volatile young character, Boon channels everything into his eyes, his posture, and the quiet intensity of his silence.

That silence is the key to the promotional image that has captivated audiences. In the frame currently circulating widely, Tommy does not scream. He does not call for help. The steel collar is tight. The chains are real. Yet he remains quiet. The reason, the film gradually makes clear, is not submission. It is calculation. Tommy has realized that noise may cost him more than it gains. Screaming might bring punishment. Calling for help might alert the wrong people—or the wrong member of the household. Behind the hollow stare is a mind that has begun to map the house, the routines, the weak points, and the psychological fractures of his captors. The rage has not disappeared. It has gone underground, becoming colder and more patient.

Stephen Graham, as the patriarch Chris, matches Boon’s intensity with a performance of controlled menace and unexpected vulnerability. Graham has long specialized in complex, morally gray men, and here he crafts a character who believes—or desperately needs to believe—that what he is doing is necessary. Andrea Riseborough’s Kathryn is quieter but no less unsettling, a spectral presence whose own history with control and loss adds another layer of unease. The young actor Kit Rakusen, as their son, delivers a performance that is both innocent and quietly eerie, observing the household’s strange new “project” with the unreadable curiosity of a child raised in an unconventional environment.

Director Jan Komasa, whose previous work includes the powerful Corpus Christi, brings a clinical precision to the material. The camera often lingers on faces and small domestic details—the clean living room, the carefully arranged bookshelves, the ordinary family meals—while the basement remains a space of concrete, metal, and suppressed violence. The contrast between the polished upstairs world and the animalistic confinement below creates a constant low-level dread. Komasa refuses easy answers. The film never fully endorses the family’s methods, nor does it allow Tommy to become a straightforward hero. Both sides are capable of cruelty. Both are shaped by damage.

Themes of control, class, masculinity, and the limits of rehabilitation run through every scene. Tommy’s previous life of chaos and online performance is held up against the family’s rigid, private system of order. The question the film keeps circling is whether true change is possible when it is forced at the end of a chain—and whether the people holding the chain are themselves free.

Early critical response has been strong on the performances even when some reviewers found the film’s messaging ambiguous or its tone uneven. Boon in particular has drawn consistent praise for the way he charts Tommy’s evolution from swaggering delinquent to something quieter, more watchful, and potentially more lethal. The physical commitment—remaining constrained for nearly the entire shoot—adds a layer of authenticity that cannot be faked.

Netflix’s decision to acquire and heavily promote the film makes sense. In an era of glossy prestige thrillers and high-concept horrors, Heel offers something more intimate and uncomfortable: a character study that uses the language of captivity thrillers to explore deeper questions about power, reform, and the stories people tell themselves to justify extreme actions. The central image of Boon in the collar has proven especially potent for social media, where stills and short clips circulate with captions that echo the official promotional language—silent rage, lost everything, desire for revenge.

Yet the film is careful not to reduce Tommy to a simple revenge fantasy. The “disturbing secret” hinted at in the promotional material is less a single twist than a gradual realization. Tommy’s refusal to scream is not just survival instinct. It is the beginning of a different kind of resistance—one that understands the house, the family, and the rules better than his captors expect. Whether that understanding leads to escape, transformation, or something darker is the question the film leaves hanging in the air like the chain itself.

For viewers drawn to intense performances and morally complex storytelling, Heel delivers. Anson Boon’s turn as Tommy stands as a career highlight so far—a portrait of a young man stripped of freedom, noise, and identity, forced to confront what remains when everything else is taken away. The steel collar may be the most visible restraint, but the real chains in this story are psychological, and they cut far deeper.

Stream it on Netflix if you are ready for a thriller that does not let you look away—and does not offer easy comfort once the final frame fades. Behind those hollow eyes, something is still burning. And it is not finished yet.