Good Boy

I watch a lot of short films and, being honest, I use a lot of spare time to do so – but oddly enough even with that I do still take pause when I see that a short film has a running time over 15 minutes. Part of this is that I have seen plenty of these that really had no business being that length, but Good Boy is not one of those. The pace is slow, and the running time is comparatively long but I was easily drawn into it. The opening scene is the film in microcosm – which is to say that it is really dark, challenging, matter-of-fact, and nicely paced to be slow but not too slow. The opening scene also brings a lot of questions and intrigue, and this continues across the film and is part of the slow pace working – because it keeps you with it the whole time.

The topic of the film (voluntary euthanasia) is one which could have led the film to be overly showy or sentimental, but it is restrained throughout. I also liked that it did not overly explain everything; instead it gives enough so that the viewer can follow, but not so much that we skip ahead mentally or lose interest in the moment. The performances help this too, by giving a lot with very little. In particular King in the lead is really good. On the surface he is doing very little, but there is a lot of character understanding and detail behind his tightly wound character, and his actions; his performance adds to the darkness and intrigue of the film, but also gives it the human element that the colder tone of the film may otherwise have lost.

Good Boy is not a fun film or an easy subject, however the film is surprisingly gripping in its restrained, dark and well paced delivery. It holds you throughout but will leave you thinking about it for some time afterwards.