A horror tale told from the perspective of a dog, Ben Leonberg\u2019s Good Boy is the sort of film that was always destined to live and die by the strength of its central gimmick. The pooch in question is a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Indy (played by the director\u2019s own dog of the same name), who moves into a home in the woods with his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), and quickly sniffs out something sinister lurking in the shadows.<\/p>\n
Good Boy finds several clever ways to draw us in to its canine perspective. Although Todd is usually by Indy\u2019s side and a couple of other people wander into the story, their faces always remain out of view, alienating us from the human goings on up above Indy\u2019s head. In one early scene, Todd gets out of his car to take a phone call while the camera stays inside with Indy so that what we hear of the conversation is hopelessly muffled. Like Indy, we can follow the general emotional contours of what Todd is saying, but we\u2019re totally deaf to the details.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Grammer once complained that his canine co-star on Frasier wasn\u2019t a real actor because his only motivation was hot dogs. Regardless of what inspired Indy\u2019s performance, though, the result is extremely affecting. It\u2019s impossible not to look into those big, worried eyes and not swear a revenge of John Wick-ian proportions should anything bad happen to him.<\/p>\n
A non-human protagonist does create certain storytelling obstacles for Good Boy, since Indy obviously isn\u2019t able to talk about what\u2019s going on around him, so the film has to find other ways to get the basic details of its plot across. An early montage of home videos from Todd\u2019s phone provides a shorthand version of his backstory, including the fact that he\u2019s been in and out of hospital a lot in recent years. A couple of non-muffled, helpfully expository phone calls taken in Indy\u2019s vicinity tell us that the house is supposed to be haunted and that it used to belong to Todd\u2019s grandfather, who may have died from a similar illness. At one point, Todd remarks, as much to the audience as to Indy, that members of his family have a habit of dying young.<\/p>\n
Indy is haunted by strange, putrid figures that appear and disappear, as well as frightening noises he can\u2019t find the source of, all while Todd\u2019s behavior becomes increasingly strange. He senses that something is wrong but has no idea what it is or how to help. The film\u2019s central metaphor is strong: It must be utterly terrifying to watch someone you love get sick when you don\u2019t understand what\u2019s happening. God knows, it\u2019s terrifying enough when you do.<\/p>\n
But Good Boy\u2019s commitment to making us share Indy\u2019s disorientation eventually becomes tiring. Sinister images and supernatural sights bleed into each other while our sense of time and place is blurred and it becomes increasingly hard to tell exactly what\u2019s going on and, as a consequence, a little hard to care. The question \u201cCan you tell a compelling horror story from the perspective of a dog?\u201d is just about intriguing enough to carry Good Boy for most of its 72-minute runtime, even if the answer here is ultimately \u201cnot quite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Score:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0Cast: Indy, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden, Stuart Rudin, Anya Krawcheck \u00a0Director: Ben Leonberg \u00a0Screenwriter: Alex Cannon, Ben Leonberg \u00a0Distributor: Shudder \u00a0Running Time: 72 min \u00a0Rating: PG-13 \u00a0Year: 2025
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