Writer/director Viljar Bøe‘s Good Boy is filled with one strange twist after another. It’s a mash-up of genres with left turns that you don’t see coming. Oh, and its premise centers around a millionaire who keeps an adult man as his pet, beyond the usual kinky stuff. This is one creative Norwegian film that continually goes places you don’t expect it to. It’s a strange one, alright.

Immediately, the film introduces Christian (Gard Løkke) and his pet Frank, a man in a furry costume who crawls on all fours and eats from doggie dishes. Frank and Christian seem to have a true-blue relationship, as weird as it seems. Enter Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen), a young college student who meets Christian on a dating app. They immediately click, and she does her best to take a liking to Frank, even watching YouTube videos on pet play. Of course, Sigrid has a lot of questions, and Christian does his best to answer them, claiming he and Frank are old, old friends and no one else would adopt Frank.

There’s a lot working well with this feature. First of all, the premise is so bizarre that you can’t help but look away during those initial scenes between Frank and Christian. They’re beyond a fetish. Sigrid’s reactions and questions are likely to reflect what most audience members are thinking. Why does this man keep a human as his pet? Is this relationship truly consensual? What the heck is Frank’s backstory? Initially, the film plays out as both a mystery and romance. You start to wonder if this a fairytale story about a young college student who catches the eye of a wealthy bachelor. But it evolves into something else entirely, and the shifts strangely work and are handled well.

Once Sigrid agrees to a weekend get-away-with Christian at his remote cabin, despite the warnings of her best friend Aurora (Amalie Willoch Njaastad), the movie shifts. Suddenly, it becomes every woman’s nightmare, getting trapped with a dude who has serious control issues. Or does he? The film isn’t quick to make Christian’s true intentions known, and when they are revealed, really within the last 25 minutes or so, it leads to a shocking ending that oddly makes sense in the greater context.

This film could have been really silly, but luckily, Fredriksen and Lokke sell it. Both give good performances here, playing off of each other, creating some truly unsettling scenes. Further, the constant presence of a man in a dog costume panting and barking, always in frame, adds to the uneasiness this film evokes. He’s there when they eat, and he’s right outside their door as they sleep.

Overall, Good Boy is about way more than pet play or a BDSM fantasy or two. This is a sharp and smart thriller, centered around power dynamics between Christian and Sigrid and Christian and Frank. It hooks you with the pet play stuff before evolving into a truly disquieting second half.

7.5 Out of 10