Some of the most popular horror movie tropes revolve around a final survivor or a plot twist that the audience would’ve never predicted. The new movie “Good boy” takes a horror movie trope about possession and spins it on its head. Instead of the main character being a person, it is instead a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever named Indy, who is slowly watching her owners get possessed. The film was shot from the dog’s perspective, because the directors wanted to capture Indy’s genuine reaction to the events. It forces the audience to wonder if dogs can actually see the supernatural and the paranormal. The film was selected for the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival, where Indy took home the “Howl of Fame” award. (American Kennel Club)
The story begins when a man named Todd moves with Indy to his deceased grandfather’s rural home to manage a chronic lung disease. Indy senses a supernatural presence that Todd can’t, as the entity appears to be the cause of Todd’s declining health.
The movie is rated PG-13 so it’s perfect for the whole family. According to an article with the director, Ben Leonberg, he drew his inspiration from several sources, including consistently watching the iconic 1982 horror film “Poltergeist,” (American Kennel Club) which begins with a dog that sensed a haunting before the humans did. Another major inspiration was the visual of a person in a dog suit, which Leonberg found to be an immediate attention-grabber. He drew his idea for the film from another popular horror film like the notorious “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for the ending and the idea of telling it from a dog’s special perspective, seen similarly in movies like “White Fang.”
“Good Boy” was rated a solid 9
0% on Rotten tomatoes, and 7.2/10 on IMDb. While these scores don’t seem to be extraordinary it will of course be up to you to decide if a dog horror story sounds like something you’d enjoy. The movie is tense enough to be a horror story but also not something that will give you nightmares for weeks.
Not only is the story interesting with an intricate plot, but the beauty of both the dog and the film’s coloring are extremely satisfying and it’s hard not to root for Indy and Todd in the end. Not only is it a visually stunning film, it’s emotionally stirring and one of the most creative films I’ve seen in a long time and I would not be surprised to see more of these POV style films in the upcoming years. By staying locked into Indy’s.
The film strips away human explanations and re-frames familiar genre cues: shadows, thresholds, wheezing machines, all as signals that an animal would read as a potential threat. The central horror comes from not just jump scares but from confusion and helpless vigilance. The movie in my opinion was an extremely fun idea and I loved it completely. To take something so niche and make it unique in this day and age where movies are churned out in weeks is really a nice breath of fresh air.
