Good Boy (2025) is a horror film that manages to feel both familiar and startlingly fresh. At its core, it's a haunted-house story, but the choice to tell it almost entirely from the perspective of a dog makes the experience distinctive. Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, is not only the central character but also the emotional anchor of the entire film. By grounding the narrative in his view of the world, director Ben Leonberg creates a lens that is at once limited and deeply affecting: we see what Indy sees, we feel what he senses, and we share his frustration when he cannot communicate the danger he perceives.
The premise is straightforward yet effective. Todd, played by Shane Jensen, inherits his family’s farmhouse and decides to leave city life behind. The building has stood empty for years, carrying with it the kind of folklore and whispered rumors that every good haunted house should. Todd, curious and somewhat idealistic, is drawn to the idea of reclaiming the property. But Indy reacts with immediate unease. From the very beginning, the dog notices presences and movements his owner does not. Shadows flicker in corners, strange noises echo through empty rooms, and spectral warnings appear. As Todd is gradually pulled deeper into the house’s dark energy, Indy is left to try to shield him from an unseen force that grows bolder with each passing night.
What makes the film memorable is how the dog’s perspective reshapes familiar horror beats. The camera often rests lower than a human eye, and that change alone makes hallways, staircases, and doorways feel uncanny. Rooms loom larger, shadows stretch longer, and sounds become the dominant source of dread. The sound design leans into this—rustles, low groans, and muffled footsteps echo as though they are pressing directly against Indy’s heightened senses. It’s a clever way to build suspense without overreliance on traditional jump scares.
Indy’s presence is never a gimmick. The dog’s performance is central to the film’s impact, and his natural expressiveness provides the heart of the story. He conveys confusion, loyalty, and fear with a raw honesty that many actors can only aspire to. Watching him struggle to warn Todd, or to protect him from unseen forces, evokes a genuine emotional response. The film’s most powerful moments are not the bursts of ghostly imagery but the quiet scenes where Indy stares into the darkness, ears twitching, body tense, while his human remains oblivious. That silent loyalty forms the emotional backbone of the narrative.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Good Boy lies in the way it treats the human characters. At first glance, they seem underwritten—sketched only in broad strokes, with little backstory or depth compared to what we might expect from a more conventional horror film. Todd is never fully explained, his family history remains hazy, and the side characters appear and disappear with minimal elaboration. But this lack of definition doesn’t feel like a flaw. Instead, it adds an intentional layer of ambiguity. Because the story is filtered almost entirely through Indy, we are never sure whether what we are seeing is literal supernatural activity or the dog’s subjective perception of events. Are the shadows really ghosts, or is Indy projecting his unease? Is Todd truly being lured by a malevolent force, or is that how a loyal companion interprets his master’s growing distance and distraction? The vagueness of the human world reinforces the uncertainty of the narrative. By blurring the line between perception and reality, Leonberg captures something deeply unsettling: the idea that horror may not come from external spirits but from the limits of our ability to communicate with those closest to us.
The film’s brevity, just seventy-two minutes, is another deliberate strength. Horror often suffers from overstaying its welcome, but here the compact runtime feels essential. To sit with Indy’s perspective much longer would risk breaking the illusion, forcing the camera to drift back toward the humans for the sake of variety. Doing so would undercut the very experiment that makes the film unique. By keeping things short, Leonberg ensures that the story stays locked into Indy’s senses without compromise. It’s not a case of the film lacking material; it’s a case of recognizing exactly how long the concept can sustain itself without dilution. The discipline to end before the point of fatigue shows remarkable restraint, and it makes the experience sharper, cleaner, and ultimately more powerful.
The supernatural imagery itself is competently staged but familiar: apparitions, whispers, uncanny relics of past occupants. What elevates them is not innovation in design but the reframing through Indy’s eyes. A hallway shadow that might seem cliché in a typical ghost story takes on new menace when it unsettles a dog who cannot explain what he’s seeing. The tension comes less from the ghosts themselves and more from the helplessness of watching a loyal companion fail to bridge the communication gap with his human.
Good Boy succeeds in carving out its own space within the genre. The film is both chilling and tender, delivering scares while never losing sight of its emotional core. The bond between Indy and Todd is the heart of the story, and it is precisely that bond that makes the horror so effective. Watching Indy persist, watching him fight against his own fear to protect his oblivious owner, invests the film with stakes that feel profoundly human even when the humans themselves remain opaque.
Leonberg’s approach to atmosphere also deserves recognition. The farmhouse setting feels appropriately timeless, dilapidated but not cartoonishly so, eerie without being overdesigned. The cinematography embraces shadows and silence, letting emptiness itself become threatening. Combined with the sound design, it creates an environment where every creak could signal danger and every pause leaves room for dread to grow.
For viewers who crave fast-paced gore or elaborate mythology, Good Boy may feel too restrained. But for those who appreciate horror that lingers in ambiguity, that thrives on atmosphere and emotion rather than spectacle, it offers something rare. It is less about answering questions than about provoking them: What do our pets perceive that we cannot? When they stare at the darkness, what do they see? And when they sense our lives veering into danger, what do they feel, knowing they cannot speak?
The film earns its place as one of the most distinctive horror releases I've had the pleasure to write about. It is nearly flawless, memorable, heartfelt, and haunting in a way that few genre films manage to be. Good Boy makes us care deeply about its protagonist, not because he might die, but because he might fail, the rare horror film where the scariest thing is not the ghost in the hallway, but the possibility of losing someone you love and being powerless to stop it. At the very least, Good Boy is further proof that we humans do not deserve dogs.
IFC and Shudder will release GOOD BOY in theaters on October 3rd
Some of you may wonder... Does the dog die?
Warning: Spoiler Alert Ahead
No, the dog does not die
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