Movie Review: Kidnapping Turns Into Rehab in Jan Komasa’s "Heel"
8/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/5 Stars
Jan Komasa (The Hater, Corpus Christi) is currently in a deep state of reflection on the rot within a nuclear family. In 2025’s underseen politically charged Anniversary, he explored how one poorly chosen marriage can cause multiple generations to implode into hatred against one another. You never know if the girl your son brings home will soon become an influential fascist! Heel is a bit simpler in scope. It follows two broken parents who are hellbent on re-asserting their purpose in the world following the loss of one of their sons. Their solution: kidnap a different young man and try their hand at raising him.
We meet young hooligan Tommy (Anson Boon) during a debaucherous night on the town. He rampages through different bars and clubs, seemingly not willing to stop until he has to physically hunch over on the street. As he sulks home in a stupor, a mysterious figure grabs him. That is quickly revealed to be Chris (Stephen Graham), a sheepish and paranoid man who is introduced while grilling potential new housekeeper Rina (Monika Frajczyk) about drug use during her job interview. When she arrives at the house, she finds Tommy chained by the neck in the basement, but after Chris threatens to get involved with her citizenship status, she decides not to tell the authorities and stay on. Chris and his more reclusive wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough) start to give the belligerent Tommy lessons on manners with painful consequences, books to read, and even some moments to connect with their younger son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen).
Stockholm syndrome slowly but surely takes hold as Heel continues. Tommy is naturally aggressive and resistant to his captors at first. After all, they’ve made it nearly impossible for him to move, let alone escape, and are not shy about shooting him with a stun gun when he acts up. However, he begins to let his guard down, and starts to open his mind to the bizarre care he is under. Anson Boon captures this shift well, gradually becoming more articulate as he intakes more of Kathryn’s required reading. Graham plays against type. Chris is not particularly tough or masculine. In fact, he's a squirrely helicopter parent who is easy to laugh at. Yet, his absolute conviction about this strange rehab program being the right course of action is deeply creepy. Even more so once we see that he’s starting to genuinely care for Tommy. Riseborough has a lot less to do. She’s mostly lurking in the background or quietly reflecting in the master bedroom, only really coming out to talk to Tommy about what he’s reading. She’s a bit more concerned with Jonathan, even if the clear negative effects this situation will have on him never truly reach either of his parents.
The direction is restrained; this may have the premise of a horror film but it is not paced that way. It is a slow, sober character piece that is largely interested in the quieter moments involved with holding someone captive. His storytelling is zoomed in enough to find it baffling that Rina, who provides absolutely nothing of substance to the story, made it into the finished screenplay. She’s simply there because an outside force from her past eventually shows up to contrive some aggression to push us into the third act. Thankfully, she disappears for such long stretches of the film that we only remember her upon return. She’s the only one of the ensemble who feels like an unnecessary add on, whereas the more thematically rich Anniversary had about 4 characters who never quite found their place.
Komasa will surely make a full fledged mainstream breakthrough within the next couple of years. He’s working a ton and aggressively tackling transgressive themes while drawing top tier talent into his worlds. I have to wonder if his decision to shoot Heel less than a year after Anniversary is tied to feeling like there was unfinished business with that project. They complement each other well, each excelling where the other falls slightly short. Hopefully, Komasa can expand his scope on the next outing and deliver something that is truly memorable.