‘Good Boy’ Review: A Sweet and Scary Horror Movie Told Entirely from the Dog’s Point of View
We’ve all experienced the creepiness of a pet sensing something you can’t; the eerie sensation that comes when you see a dog barking in the middle of the night at an empty wall, staring at nothing, or wandering off in a hurry to chase something that seems invisible. It’s spooky enough to witness in real life, but add in some haunting horror imagery — as Ben Leonberg’s “Good Boy” does in great supply — and it becomes a foundation for one of the year’s scariest movies, albeit one that also doubles as an emotional and moving tribute to the emotional bond between people and their four-legged friends.
“Good Boy” has a simple concept that hides a laborious and inventive independent production. The film’s director, co-writer (with Alex Cannon), cinematographer, and producer, Leonberg spent three years with his wife and producer partner Kari Fischer coaching their own adorable retriever Indy, turning him into one of the most emotive actors of his generation — regardless of species.
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Indy stars as, well, Indy, a very good boy whose human, Todd (Shane Jensen), relocates to his grandfather’s cabin upstate after a cancer scare — nevermind that the house is creepy as all hell, has long been abandoned, or that Todd’s sister Vera (Arielle Friedman) thinks the grounds are haunted. Todd shrugs all of that off, oblivious to the house’s screamingly obvious “horror movie waiting to happen” vibe. You know who senses danger right away, clocking the ghostly eyes that look back at him from the dark of night, the shadowy figure creeping through the corners of the house, and the ominous sounds coming from the basement? Why it’s Indy, of course.
It’s easy to ascribe the success of “Good Boy” to the power of its canine star, but the film refuses to let Indy feel like a cheap gimmick. If anything, it’s a very well-considered one, as the relatively simple act of replacing a dumb human character at the center of a haunted house story with a dog makes even the most ordinary and predictable of scares newly effective. After all, audiences are immediately skeptical of horror movies with dogs in them (to the point where there’s a whole website dedicated to warning dog lovers if one dies in a movie). Because Indy has no knowledge of what is happening in the house, nor any awareness of what a haunted house even is in the first place, his reactions are scarier and more tragic than those of a human. Likewise, the premise is strengthened by the fact that Indy is still under Todd’s command, and can’t just leave the house at the first sign of terror; he’s a prisoner of his owner’s bad decision-making.
Cinematographer Wade Grebnoel keeps the camera at eye level with Indy, using his point-of-view to show how the dog sees things. Todd, the neighbor, even the strange apparitions are obfuscated simply because of their height, which adds to the eerieness of Indy’s experience but also makes Indy’s recognition of Todd’s voice all the more emotional. To create tension, a lot of the movie is just Indy tilting his head in curiosity while looking into the distance, immediately followed by a shot of empty space, which lets the imagination go wild. The sound design also deserves huge credit for how scary and impactful “Good Boy” is, not just in the case of the bizarre and spooky sounds around the house, but also in how it isolates — or even creates — the sounds that Indy makes throughout the film.
Not that Indy’s performance requires any real augmentation, as the title of Leonberg’s debut is underselling just how much of a good boy its star really is. His fixated dark eyes and floppy ears convey a wide range of emotions that sell the horror at hand just as lucidly as they articulate the deep and unbreakable bond between Indy and Todd. Indeed, “Good Boy” uses its supernatural undertones in order to seed a supernatural genre story with a simple allegory about a boy and his dog.
You can draw your own conclusions about the nature of the weird things happening in the house — dogs can smell things we can’t, not just drugs, but also death itself — but there is no denying one thing, which is that Indy fiercely loves Todd and will go to hell and back for him. This review won’t spoil the pooch’s fate, but rest assured that “Good Boy” doesn’t just leave you fearing for Indy’s life, it also scares you to think of what it must be like for a dog to grapple with the concept of mortality itself. The real dog may have had no idea what was happening on set, or that he was on a set to begin with, but his performance is all the more affecting for how well Leonberg’s film is able to leverage that confusion into something all too relatable to the humans watching along.
Grade: A-
“Good Boy” premiered at SXSW 2025. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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