FrightFest review – Good Boy
Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen) is a fairly directionless student. She’s doing a one-year psychology course – which means she really ought to know better than not to run a mile when Christian (Gard Løkke), the handsome rich guy she’s met on a dating app, lets slip that the dog he lives with is Frank (Nicolai Narvesen Lied), who is happier inside a dog-suit and acting as Christian’s pet. It’s not a sexual thing, which ought to tip Sigrid off that it’s a power thing – but not only is Christian a multi-millionaire, but he can also cook. When Christian takes Sigrid and Frank out to his cabin in the wilderness – an impressive summer home, with red barn – she really ought to run two miles … but she goes along, and two masks – one literal, one metaphorical – slip, so the film segues somewhat predictably from off-beam romance to we’ve-been-here-before torture porn involving cages, leashes, punishments and other unlovely themes endemic in FrightFest films circa ten years ago.
This Norwegian nasty tale is short enough not to be too much of an endurance test, well-acted by two of the three leads (Lied’s talent is hard to gauge thanks to an expressionless dog mask) and has a bright, open, airy Nordic feel which perhaps makes the trap snapping shut all the more unpleasant. Like many films of its type, it tends to distance the viewer from the protagonist who necessarily ignores all the omens and bungles things badly when forced to take action – at one point, Sigrid makes that infuriating mistake of presuming one bash over the head with a branch will do the trick when generations of final girls could have told her to overdo it and land multiple blows until the dastard’s head is paste on the floor. It’s well directed by Viljar Bøe, who perhaps skimps a little too much on the script.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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