‘Heel’ Review

There is something refreshing about a film that refuses to behave the way you expect it to. Heel is one of those films. The less you know going in, the better. It begins like a crime story, then slowly twists into something stranger, darker, and far more psychologically complicated than you might anticipate.

Jan Komasa has always been drawn to morally complex material. From Corpus Christi to his other work, he gravitates toward stories where belief, identity, and morality collide in uncomfortable ways. Heel continues that tradition. It is a brutally human psychological thriller that will have you questioning your morality long after the credits roll.

The story begins with Tommy, a 19-year-old who lives like there is no tomorrow. He is reckless, volatile, and completely adrift. Drugs, parties, violence, and petty cruelty fill his nights. It is the kind of life that feels exciting when you are inside it and tragic when you step back to look at it clearly.

After a particularly chaotic night out, Tommy becomes separated from his friends and disappears into the darkness of a quiet street. When he wakes up, he is chained in the basement of a remote Yorkshire farmhouse.

That is where Heel really begins.

Tommy quickly realizes that he has not been kidnapped by criminals looking for money. Instead he has been taken by a strange and deeply unsettling family. Chris, played by Stephen Graham, lives in the house with his nearly catatonic wife Kathryn and their son Jonathan. The family has decided that Tommy needs to be fixed.

Chris believes he can do exactly that.

What follows is one of the strangest forced rehabilitation experiments you will ever see on screen. Chris approaches Tommy with the determination of a man who genuinely believes he is saving someone. His methods are brutal, manipulative, and sometimes absurdly theatrical.

Imagine a furious public service announcement about drugs and violence brought to life by a man carrying a taser.

Chris subjects Tommy to a barrage of psychological pressure. He shows him videos of his own reckless behavior, the kind of humiliating footage that could easily appear on a public freakout forum online. He lectures him about responsibility and discipline with the intensity of a preacher delivering a sermon. At times it feels like he is less a person and more a walking cautionary tale.

And yet Stephen Graham plays him with such conviction that you cannot simply dismiss him as a villain.

Graham has been operating at an astonishing level for years now. Film after film, performance after performance, he brings an intensity and emotional authenticity that few actors can match. Here he is absolutely ferocious. He shifts between paternal warmth and terrifying authority with ease. One moment he is trying to guide Tommy like a concerned father. The next moment he is reminding him exactly who holds the power in that basement.

Stephen Graham is a beast of an actor. Watching him work here is genuinely thrilling. Andrea Riseborough plays Kathryn, Chris's wife, with a quiet and haunting presence. For much of the film she appears distant, fragile, almost ghostlike. But as the story unfolds you begin to sense the emotional history buried beneath her silence. Riseborough has always been brilliant at communicating internal turmoil with the smallest gestures, and she brings that same subtle power to this role.

Then there is Anson Boon as Tommy.

Boon carries the film on his shoulders. At first Tommy seems almost impossible to sympathize with. He is loud, aggressive, and deeply unpleasant. The opening scenes paint him as exactly the sort of person society loves to condemn. A young man burning through life without any sense of consequence.

But once he is trapped in that basement, something begins to change.

Boon allows Tommy to evolve slowly. The anger does not disappear overnight. The fear does not magically transform him into a better person. Instead we watch a gradual psychological unraveling. At times you feel sorry for him. At other times you remember the things he has done and feel conflicted all over again.

That moral confusion is exactly what makes Heel so fascinating.

I absolutely loved the nonstop uneasy vibe this film traverses through. We have no idea whom to root for, and where things are headed, and it is genuinely great to watch something like this. Every scene pushes you further into uncomfortable territory.

Komasa directs the film with a sharp sense of tone. The atmosphere is relentlessly tense but also strangely humorous at times. There is a streak of dark British comedy running through the story that catches you off guard in the best possible way. Some of Chris's methods are so extreme that they become almost surreal.

Yet the film never fully turns into parody. Komasa keeps the emotional stakes grounded, which allows the absurdity to coexist with genuine dread.

At its core Heel is about family. Or at least a warped version of family.

Chris sees Tommy as a project. A lost cause that can still be redeemed if someone is willing to take drastic measures. Jonathan exists somewhere in the middle of this strange dynamic, sometimes acting like a fellow prisoner, sometimes like an accomplice.

The house itself becomes its own character. The basement is both prison and classroom. A place of punishment but also a twisted attempt at guidance.

That contradiction gives the film its emotional bite.

The deeper the story goes, the more you realize that every character here is carrying some kind of wound. The motivations behind their actions are messy, complicated, and often heartbreaking. At its core there is a deeper meaning to these characters that slowly reveals itself piece by piece.

Heel becomes less about the kidnapping and more about the question of whether people can actually change. Can cruelty create growth? Can discipline become redemption? Or does violence simply breed more violence?

The film never offers easy answers.

There is one brief exchange that perfectly captures the emotional devastation lurking beneath the surface. A detective asks Tommy's mother if she filed a missing persons report after her son disappeared.

Her response is painfully simple.

She says she texted him a few times.

That moment lands like a punch to the gut. It quietly explains everything about why Tommy became the person he is. Neglect can be its own form of brutality. Sometimes the absence of care is more damaging than anything else.

Heel understands this truth deeply.

For most of its running time the film feels incredibly controlled. The performances are electric, the tension never disappears, and the narrative keeps shifting just enough to keep you uncertain about where things are heading.

It is dark but also oddly comforting in a strange way. Watching this broken group of people interact begins to feel like observing some bizarre experiment in human behavior.

The film does stumble slightly near the end. The final stretch risks leaving a few viewers unsure about whether the story fully lands its thematic punch. Some of the ideas are perhaps a little too direct, and a few character motivations could have been explored further.

But even when Heel edges toward being slightly on the nose, it never stops being compelling.

This is a solid little bottle gem powered by extraordinary acting and a director who clearly understands how to build psychological tension.

Komasa constructs the film like a moral puzzle. By the end you are no longer sure what good or bad even means within this story. The categories begin to collapse in on themselves.

And that is the point.

Heel is a fable, a nightmare, and a dare all at once. It is weird, unsettling, occasionally hilarious, and filled with phenomenal performances from top to bottom.

Absolutely brilliant. And deeply disturbing in the most thoughtful way.

Heel is now available On Demand and in Theaters.