Horrorfest 2025: Good Boy

Good Boy

Written by Alex Cannon and Ben Leonberg

Directed by Ben Leonberg

Starring Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden and Indy

USA, 2025

I once joked that I wished I AM LEGEND was about the dog and not about Will Smith. When I say “once” I mean “every time I AM LEGEND has ever come up in conversation over the last 20 years.” Spoiler: there’s a scene halfway through where Smith’s dog, his only companion, dies, and Smith must carry on alone. It occurred to me it might have been a better movie if the twist was that Smith dies and the dog must carry on alone.

GOOD BOY is likely the closest thing we’ll ever get to that — a haunted house movie told almost entirely from the point of view of the dog. 

Indy, the dog, who plays himself, moves to a broken down old house in the country after his owner inherits it from his dad. The dog’s owner is chronically ill, and his sister is convinced there’s something sinister about the house.

Indy’s pretty convinced, too. He sees stuff his owner does not, like shadowy figures and visions of another dog who used to live there but has since disappeared, Bandit, which is officially a good name for a dog. So is Indy. Good job, filmmakers.

This movie reminded me of a quote I heard once that I’m going to mangle here but it was something along the lines of: “Humans and animals view each other over a gulf of complete misunderstanding.” I feel like that about sums up this flick. The dog and his owner are just completely incapable of understanding each other, which is a refreshing take on the bond between pets and their owners you don’t often see in movies and also a useful starting point for a haunted house movie. Most haunted house movies have dull human characters who are written to be deliberately obtuse as a function of the plot. In this one, we don’t have to suffer through that, because we understand when a dog and a man are not on the same page in a way that we don’t when it’s two people.

Much has been said about Indy’s command performance, but I recommend you stay after the credits for a making-of segment in which director Ben Leonberg makes no bones about the fact Indy has no idea he’s in a movie and any acting you see him do is all you projecting your feelings onto him. Again, a refreshing and realistic take on the subject. I don’t know if this making-of is tacked onto the streaming version, because I saw this movie in a theater, but I found it to be the most interesting part of the movie, and would gladly watch a feature length doc about the making of this one, which was clearly a labor of love and story worth telling.

Oh, but what about the movie itself? It’s okay. I’m not a big haunted house movie guy. Throwing a dog into this one elevates it a little. The fact that this movie operates as both a ghost story and a story of facing death and letting go only serves to make me wonder what a movie from a dog’s point of view WITHOUT ghosts about death and dying would have been like. Sort of like when I watched DROP and wished it was just about a terrible date instead of a murder plot. Woof!