Indy is a dog who lives with Todd, a man suffering from a chronic lung disease. Todd decides to take Indy with him and move to his late grandfather’s uninhabited house somewhere in the woods, despite his sister Vera being worried about him becoming far too isolated out there. Not to mention that the house itself has a certain bad history, with no inhabitants staying for long with the exception of their grandfather, who died there. The grandfather also had a dog, which went missing when he died. Vera appears to be a little superstitious and believes something in the house might have caused their grandfather’s death, but Todd just scoffs at her. Indy, however, starts experiencing strange things in the house and the nearby surroundings. Dark shadows looming in the corners, and the sound of a dog whimpering and barking. Meanwhile, Todd’s health gets even worse and he starts regularly coughing up blood, and also gets increasingly irritable towards both Indy and his sister Vera who keeps calling him. Indy is sensing that something evil is gradually getting a hold on them both…are they awaiting the same fate as Todd’s grandfather and his dog, or can Indy change what appears to be an impending disaster for them both?
Good Boy is a supernatural horror film directed by Ben Leonberg in his directorial debut, co-written with Alex Cannon. Leonberg got the idea for the film after re-watching Poltergeist (1982), and started thinking about how animals in haunted house films are known for sensing presences before the humans do. He thought it would be a fun idea to write a traditional haunted house script for a film with the perspective of a dog, and started on it in 2017 together with Alex Cannon. And the main actor of the feature, the Good Boy himself, is none other than Leonberg’s Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever dog Indy, simply playing himself. Principal photography took place in Harding Township, New Jersey, and the filming process took over three years to complete. Much of the long process was due to, well, Indy being a dog, and not having a double like many animal-focused movies do. Leonberg also stated that a lot of Indy’s expressions were done by post-production techniques and the Kuleshov effect (a film editing principle where different shots can be interpreted with a deeper meaning and emotional impact when placed together). The movie had a budget of only $750,000, which the film has earned back many times over as it has so far grossed over $8 million worldwide.
While Good Boy may appear to play very hard on using a cute gimmick with little else to it than that, they have actually managed to deliver a movie that offers a solid haunted house story. Prior to watching this I didn’t really know exactly what to expect. Would it be like a longer episode of Animal Planet’s The Haunted, without the interviews? Well, not really. The movie does, in fact, tell the narrative solely from Indy’s perspective, which makes it a different experience in its apparent simplicity. While some of the story is told through the dialogue we overhear between Todd and Vera, the rest is a mix of Indy’s experiences, dreams and sightings. It’s a simple narrative for sure, but told in a steady way that never loses the pacing, and with a runtime of only 1 hour and 13 minutes it packs everything in well without outstaying its welcome. It’s all about creepy and ominous atmosphere from the very start, and there were several parts of the movie where that hopeless, disease-ridden feeling reminded me a little bit of Relic (2020). We see Indy in a rather hopeless situation as his owner gets more and more ill, trapped in a house where it’s all about illness, evil presences and echoes of past tragedies. And visually it looks great, using some clever perspective shots to portray the dog POV which often creates an unsettling effect.
Animals can sense spirits, they say. Well, anyone who’s ever owned a pet know that they can have this uncanny habit of staring at corners or spots on the wall for no apparent reason, creeping the fuck out of you. All for what was probably just a tiny bug you couldn’t see or a sound from the neighbor’s house you couldn’t hear. The notion of animals being able to “see spirits“ is something a lot of people believe, but then again, I’m pretty certain that we would “stare at nothing“ too if our hearing suddenly got a much wider frequency range or our eyesight got higher motion detection. I personally don’t think there’s anything supernatural to put into it, but the idea does at least make for some spooky animal-centered stories!
Good Boy is a very decent haunted house film, filled with creepy atmosphere. And yeah…gotta love Indy, he’s cute as hell and did an excellent job (and kudos to the creators for pulling this off, of course). This was also a pretty strong debut, so it will be exciting to see if Ben Leonberg decides to create more horror movies, animal-POV or not.
If you want some more animal-POV (or at least partially) horror movies, make sure to also check out Cat’s Eye (1985) and Bad Moon (1996).
Director: Ben Leonberg
Writers: Alex Cannon, Ben Leonberg
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Indy, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35521922/
