Abduction and torture are pretty common concepts in horror. Hounds of Love, Cloverfield, Locked, and Saw are just a few films that explore modern themes of accountability, the millennial-boomer generational divide, and humanity’s most savage behaviors. Working off a script written by Bartek Bartosik and Naqqash Khalid, director Jan Komasa digs in for a brutal, yet tragically empathetic, story called Heel. The film invites the audience to see the very real human beings tucked behind a well-intended but impactfully cruel exterior.
Tommy (Anson Boon) is a scoundrel, a street rat hellbent on destruction. During a drug-fueled bender of violence, he’s abducted and held hostage by Chris (Stephen Graham), his wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), and their young son Jonathan (Kit Rakusen). They hope to reform him and help him turn away from his harmful ways. When Tommy wakes up in their basement, he finds himself chained like a dog (thus the film title) and forced to sleep on a dirty mattress. He endures endless mind games (e.g., seeing footage of him beating a man, ala Clockwork Orange) that slowly chip away at his psyche and make him question his nefarious actions.
When Chris hires Rina (Monika Frajczyk) as a housekeeper, Tommy believes he might have an ally to help him escape. But she’s desperate for work and doesn’t want to rock the boat too much. Tommy’s fight for autonomy is a test of sheer will and determination. No manner of brute strength can help him free himself from the chains; it’ll take cunning to break through the (thematic) brick wall. He struggles against a classist system that frowns upon the lower class and seeks to destroy humanity itself through psychological warfare and destroying necessary safety nets. The family’s actions might be indefensible, but their intent is not completely evil.
Bartosik and Khalid pen a script that speaks to living in a modern society. The class tug-of-war is inescapable. Everyone is involved in some fashion. And as they say: “There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.” The world is fraught with violence against women and the lower class. The scriptwriters press those ideas into their horrifying story about a violent, young, entitled, white man who needs to, rightfully, learn a hard lesson. Komasa breathes life into the screenplay in unexpected ways, with Boon delivering a career-defining performance—raw, visceral, and unfiltered.
Heel is a damn good piece of entertainment, and the social underpinning about class is simply a bonus. Jan Komasa (Suicide Room, Corpus Christi) flexes his muscles as a director and leaves an indelible stamp on contemporary horror filmmaking. With some award-winning features under his belt, Komasa looks ahead to a promising career in the genre and elsewhere, to be quite frank. He’s meticulous in his choices, bringing out the best in his actors. When you have performers like Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough, you have a higher bar to clear. And Komasa does so with room to spare.
Heel is available now on VOD.
