I can’t believe that no one has thought to do this before: a haunted house movie from the perspective of the family dog.
Good Boy is a riff on the everyday — literally, every day — mystery that anyone who lives with a canine companion knows: What has got the damn dog so riled up? What the heck is she looking at in that empty room? There’s nothing there, you silly bean! It’s been a one-off visual joke in many a horror flick, the goofy pup cocking its floofy head at an odd noise in the basement or the weird shadow in the corner. Indeed, filmmaker Ben Leonberg, making his feature debut here, was inspired by the opening scene of the 1982 horror classic Poltergeist, which introduces its about-to-be-haunted family from the point of view of the family mutt as it does its late-night domestic roaming.
But what could have felt like a cheap gimmick couldn’t be further from that. Good Boy is a marvel: so strikingly original, so powerfully atmospheric, so deeply, deeply affecting. This is one of the most profoundly beautiful movies ever about the attachment of a dog to its person. This is a horror movie, yes (though not an especially gory one, and not one that thinks trashy jump scares are frightening), but it’s also an interspecies love story, and one without a lick of phony sentimentality.
The story is simple, and simply done: Indy — a golden-furred retriever-ish good boy of indeterminate mixed breed, a gorgeous white stripe down his forehead, and adorable floppy ears — moves with his person, Todd (Shane Jensen), from the city to the family house in the country. Okay, yes, the family house is a mostly abandoned creepy cabin in the woods that even Todd and his sister Vera (Arielle Friedman) acknowledge is “cursed.” And yes, it appears that Todd has removed himself here because his health is in a precarious state; he’s a young man, but he’s clearly not well. We worry for his well-being, which surely cannot be made any better in what is, we slowly come to see, a place obviously touched by more than a hint of the otherworldly.
Indy has no idea what’s going on, of course, other than that he gets to be with Todd, hooray! When I say that Good Boy is from the dog’s perspective, I mean that Leonberg — director, cowriter (with Alex Cannon), and cinematographer — is unwaveringly committed to the bit. The camera stays low with Indy’s sightline, and Todd and the few other humans who appear are mostly voices, silhouettes, and legs. (The human face we see most is that of legendary horror filmmaker and actor Larry Fessenden [Killers of the Flower Moon, Vanishing on 7th Street], as Todd’s grandfather on some old family VHSes that Todd falls asleep to late at night. It doesn’t seem like Grandpa was faring too well in this house, either.) We overhear phone conversations between Todd and his sister that fill in a few details about what’s going on with him, but we don’t get much. It’s tempting to say that we often understand more of what’s happening than Indy does, but not by a lot.
What is definitely the case is that Indy has a keener grasp on the dangers of the house than Todd does. There are specters here; there are bad vibes. There is absolutely something under the bed (isn’t there?), and under the bed has never been closer onscreen than it is to us via Indy. The basement is scary, Indy’s doggy dreams are getting petrifying, and… and… is there a ghost dog wandering this house?!
I’m making it sound like the gimmicky I said it wasn’t, and I still promise you, it’s nothing of the sort. There is no CGI here, and no talking-animal crap. Indy is Leonberg’s own dog, and his name is actually Indy; his “performance,” which is totally natural and heartrendingly emotive, is not the result of Hollywood training but gently coaxed by the treats and love of Leonberg and his partner, Indy’s other person, producer Kari Fischer. Good Boy is a genuine indie labor of love three years in the making, that long because, Leonberg has said, he “worked around [Indy’s] schedule” (that is, mostly naps). Indy has “no idea he’s in [a movie],” Leonberg has said — the dog we see onscreen is not performing but literally just responding authentically to the real people he really adores. If the onscreen story is an exquisite expression of a dog’s love for a human, then its production is as well.
I absolutely loved Good Boy. I was moved to tears by the end of the roller coaster of emotion it sends us on. (Oh, the website Does the Dog Die? is gonna get a workout because of this movie, and no, I’m not going to spoil.) Horror movies don’t often come with bona fide — bone fido? — heart and soul like this one does. The bar for the genre has been raised very, very high.
more films like this:
• Isle of Dogs [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV | Disney+]
• Marley & Me [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV | Disney+ UK]
