If you’re a fan of horror movies or dogs, you’ve probably heard about Good Boy, the horror movie in which the events play out from the perspective of a retriever named Indy. I am a card-carrying dog lover who can barely stand to see an animal distressed in a movie, and I still bravely made my way to the theater to see the film after being intrigued by its premise and the rave reviews coming out of advance screenings earlier this year. I had resigned myself to possibly leaving the movie early if Indy’s No Good Very Bad Night proved to be too much. Thankfully, I didn’t feel the need to, and I was actually really impressed with the titular good boy’s performance, considering Indy had no prior movie training. If you’re a fellow animal lover who’s wary of the film, I understand your hesitation, but Good Boy is an interesting enough experiment that it’s worth seeing, and is surprisingly restrained as far as the horrors it subjects its furry star to.
We won’t get into major spoilers until later, and we’ll put a big ol’ spoiler warning over it if you’re concerned about that, but what I left Good Boy most excited to talk about was how well it masks Indy’s lack of film experience. After the movie, director and co-writer Ben Leonberg presents a short documentary breaking down how he and his crew managed to pull off a horror movie starring a dog who had no prior training. Indy is Leonberg’s dog, and Good Boy was filmed with a small crew of people the dog was familiar with. So any time you see his character upset or scared, he’s actually just chilling. Leonberg explains how almost every shot of this pup is only made unnerving or scary by the surrounding shots of ghostly figures and the ominous music.
Indy may not know he’s in a movie, but Good Boy is tailor-made for him and his perspective. Scenes are shot from his level, and you go long stretches of the movie without seeing a human face. Good Boy isn’t merely a horror movie with a dog in its cast; it is a horror movie that makes every creative decision in its tight 72-minute runtime to emphasize that he is the star of this waking nightmare. Good Boy follows Indy as he and his owner, Todd, move from the city to the family’s seemingly haunted rural home. From the outset, Indy sees ghosts his owner doesn’t, and as Todd’s condition worsens, Indy begins to fear they may be a threat to the ailing human.
Thanks to some smart filmmaking decisions, good editing, and shot composition, Indy is a very emotive actor for someone who has no idea what’s going on. In the documentary, Leonberg and his crew show how they would make sounds from behind the camera to get the dog to look where they needed, and his lack of training meant that they could spend all day shooting and only get a few seconds of usable footage. The whole production took over a year because the team was committed to Indy being the star, and I mean, look at that face. That’s a face made for the big screen.
But you’re probably wondering if Indy is shown suffering throughout the movie. The horror genre has a way of putting its stars through grave situations that usually end with them bloodied and battered, if not worse. Without spoilers, I will say that Good Boy is pretty tame as far as what it subjects Indy to for most of the film. I imagine that was a conscious choice, considering, again, Indy isn’t an acting dog, and the more distressing moments his character is put through are some of Good Boy’s more awkward shots because it was clear the crew didn’t want to stress the pup out, so some scenes, like when Indy stumbles into a fox trap, are a little clunky, but they’re also very quick.
Now, for the question a lot of you may be wondering: Does Indy die? I can tell you that Good Boy doesn’t do a lot of terrible shit to its canine star, and none of that will matter if the poor baby doesn’t make it to the end, right? Well, here’s a spoiler warning, so if you don’t want to know, don’t scroll down any further.
No, Indy doesn’t die in Good Boy, but another dog does. As Indy investigates his new home, he learns about Todd’s recently deceased grandfather, who was also subjected to the horrors of this house. The old man also had a dog named Bandit who could see the same monsters Indy does, and Todd mentions that his grandfather’s dogs all “ran away” over the years. Well, that wasn’t true for at least one of them. At a point later in the film when shit’s getting real, Indy finds Bandit’s skeleton in the house cellar. In a few instances, Bandit’s “ghost” tries to help Indy by guiding him to clues within the house, but he’s only able to do this because he’s already dead under the house. If that’s a deal breaker for you, I understand. But if you’re primarily worried about on-screen dog suffering, Good Boy is as about as light on it as it can be with its premise.
Good Boy is such an interesting, imaginative movie that I do urge people who just enjoy cinema to give it a watch, even if they’re worried the subject matter might be challenging. The movie is an experiment that really pays off because its crew commits, and the moments where it pulls its punches speak to that commitment to its star’s comfort. If the premise scares you off, that’s understandable, but if you’re even mildly curious, as a dog lover myself, I say it’s worth giving it a shot.
