‘Best Boy’ review: A bizarre family contest unveils dark secrets in Canadian woodland thriller

Dir/scr: Jesse Noah Klein. Canada. 2025. 95mins.

Writer/director Jesse Noah Klein’s genre-bending thriller Best Boy begins at a funeral. In an opening scene that recalls Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives, adult siblings Phillip (Caroline Dhavernas), Lawrence (Aaron Abrams) and Eli (Marc Bendavid) have assembled with their mother Anne (Lise Roy) to mourn the family patriarch. Each shares slightly different emotions as they stand over his casket: sorrow, bitterness and maybe even a bit of relief. This was a competitive and toxic man, one whose grip over the family continues after his death. 

The film’s intensity is further ratcheted by its keen aesthetic

Similar to Klein’s previous film Like A House On Fire (2020), Best Boy is a psychologically intense film inspired by the sudden opening of a familial wound. The small ensemble cast authentically portrays these three embattled siblings, while the mostly single location of a woodland cabin gives the film some theatrical flare. Those two elements, plus this fiery picture’s insistence on critiquing tradition and violence, should help grant it a fruitful festival run following its premiere in Edinburgh International Film Festival competition.

Taking place over the course of a single day in a Canadian forest, the film is divided into several chapters named after the rounds of an imaginary family tournament created by the dead man many years ago. It was a regular occurrence in the siblings’ childhood, and they have reunited to compete once more after their father’s death. Each of the three contests – which involve tests such as who can hold their breath under water the longest – pushes the endurance of each sibling. The rules are often read by their stoic mother, who dons a viking helmet and a cape and reads from a scroll. There is a podium for the winner, and the losers must strip off their clothes and proclaim their worthlessness. This time the stakes are even higher, as the victor will also receive a $100,000 prize. 

The angsty dynamic between siblings, however, suggests money is not really a factor. The trio simply want to win at all costs, trained by their father to value supremacy. That desire serves as an explanation for their terrible lives: Lawrence’s wife and family are leaving him; Phillip is an alcoholic; Eli is caught in arrested development. Each actor loudly expresses their character’s respective personal pain, often marked by yelling in scenes of major arguments that recall the work of John Cassavetes. Such physical and emotional broadness allows these actors to go big, inspiring a combustible sense of tension.  

The film’s intensity is further ratcheted by its keen aesthetic. The wide, at times, fish-eyed lensing neatly mirrors the strain at the heart of this family. Klein also leans on high-angle shots. Though there are no spectres here per se, the oblique angle does act as a personification of their father. Interestingly, the warped verticality of these shots is less like the benevolent omniscience you would receive from a beloved spirit, and more like surveillance footage. That choice suggests a metaphorical translation of the poisonous air this father has left around his family. 

The challenge for these broken characters it not to win. Rather, they must reroute the cycle of generational violence by breaking away from a tradition that calls for the strong to dominate the weak. As this family barrels toward a stressful freakout in the woods, however, the cacophony of shouting is nearly too much to take, and it is unclear whether Klein will ever make his point or just wallow in volatile excess. Nevertheless, the filmmaker serves up a quiet denouement that underscores the fact this bad blood is thicker than initially suspected.