Photosensitivity Warning: Good Boy involves several night time sequences that occur during a storm, resulting in a great deal of lightning flashes. Those with light sensitivities should take precautions before viewing.
Every genre has their tropes, but very few play with them or have greater success when they do than horror. Within each horror story, be it phantasmagorical, slasher, chiller, thriller, Lovecraftian, Poe-inspired, supernatural, lofi, hifi, maxmimalist, or minimalist (to name a few), there are expected beats that lead to frights and delights. Where there can be comfort in the expected jump scares, sound cues, and mayhem, there’s something to be said for a tale that opts to twist the formula. Like last year’s In a Violent Nature (2024) which saw a slasher film primarily through the perspective of the exhumed killer, co-writer/director Ben Leonberg’s feature-debut Good Boy, premiering in the Midnighter section of SXSW 2025, is a ghost story from the perspective of Indy, the bestest boy. As with Nature before it, Good Boy feels experimental and exhilarating, coloring within the lines via the tropes we know, but, by placing them within a different context, making everything feel unpredictable and terrifying.
Todd finds Indy staring at a seemingly empty corner in GOOD BOY. Photo Credit: Good Boy. Photo courtesy of SXSW.
After dealing with a health crisis, Indy and his best friend/owner Todd (Shane Jensen) travel to a family home previously occupied by Todd’s grandfather in hopes of finding some restoration. While Todd is focused on making the place his own, Indy is perpetually on guard, either tracking shadows or dealing with nightmares seemingly involving the last dog, Bandit (Max), who lived here. As the days drag on and the nights fill with storms, Indy grows more aware of a lurking danger that threatens everything that he loves, but can he do something to stop it?
Minor spoiler ahead.
Shane Jensen as Todd in GOOD BOY. Photo courtesy of What’s Wrong With Your Dog? LLC.
Before moving any further because some folks need to know this — Indy makes it.
Spoilers over.
Scripted by Leonberg and Alex Cannon (The F-Word), the film is a fairly straight-forward ghost story with several applicable themes involving death, dying, and the horror of being unable to stop a loved one’s slow demise. Ordinarily, a horror film like this, be it recent releases like Relic (2020) or fellow SXSW 2025 title The Surrender, center a human character the audience can relate to, using them as the avatar for a variety of life-threatening experiences we, the audience, can share without harm. The shift in perspective to Indy is a diabolical one for a variety of reasons. The first is the fact that folks who love dogs will immediately become afraid for Indy regardless of the threat level on-screen. It’s not just Indy’s beautiful face and demeanor, but the performer’s (first-time, by the way) believability in affection and protection for Todd. The opening sequence demonstrates the awareness Indy has for what’s going on around Todd and it feels somehow worse that we’re watching as Indy *knows* something is wrong, but can neither articulate or identify what nor do anything to stop it. This creates a sensation of inevitability that extends past the opening scene and through the rest of the film for how can Indy stop such a threat? To their credit, Leonberg and Cannon use Indy to uncover clues in the same way that recent Oscar winner Flow (2024) utilized non-language speaking animals to convey a post-human apocalypse world and always in a way that’s befitting of and grounded within the realities of the animal/breed. So those expecting a Disneyfied tale like Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), sorry — the clues come from Indy’s curiosity and the pull he receives to investigate sights and sounds around the house or within Todd’s vicinity, even from the conversations we’re somewhat within earshot of, but there’s no narrator here anthropomorphizing Indy. This choice is a specific one and it pays dividends in the way disquiet and discomfort are amplified.
L-R: Indy and Shane Jensen as Todd in GOOD BOY. Photo courtesy of What’s Wrong With Your Dog? LLC.
This brings us to technical aspects that make Good Boy an exhausting experience that’ll have you searching the shadows, counting them even, to ensure what is present in your space should be. First, if you’re thinking “from the dog’s perspective” means literally first-person POV, that’s a very small portion of the film and is typically used in the same way as if the protagonist of the story was human. What this really means is that first-time cinematographer Wade Grebnoel shoots most of Good Boy low, with most people captured from the waist up, thereby keeping Indy as the visual center of the frame, regardless of how close or wide the shot or who else might be in it with Indy. Additionally, and this is a beautiful touch, with scant few exceptions tied directly to the narrative and its themes, human faces are irrelevant to the story. We don’t need to know what Todd looks like, only that Indy is devoted to him and that Todd is kind to Indy, demonstrated by the physical contact (pets, rubs, carrying), sharing of food (regular meals and popcorn snacks), and the generally-associated acts of kindness between an owner and their pet. The script works in many instances to demonstrate Todd’s devotion and affection for Indy, thereby making their separation, incidental or intentional, meaningful for Indy. An example of the way the purely technical creates a gut-punch of a moment by conveying intense psychological meaning is in the simple presentation of Indy’s devotion: Indy positions himself to stare out a window after Todd and Grebnoel utilizes a slow pull of the camera so that we see Indy through the house window as we get farther away (a physical manifestation of Todd’s absence and Indy’s growing angst), and, when the distance of the camera reaches its zenith, the hour changes and the camera pushes back in showing Indy having not moved an inch. While this kind of shot gets you in your feels, what will make you long for a pee pad is the combination cinematography, production design, and VFX throughout the film which come together to create the sensation of something just beyond your visual perception, something we know that Indy can see, but maybe we can’t (or can we?). From here, Leonberg and Cannon set forth a reinterpretation of various horror tricks and tropes as we ponder the shadows — their size, their scope, their reach, and whether or not something is moving within them.
Indy in GOOD BOY. Photo courtesy of What’s Wrong With Your Dog? LLC.
To that end, whether there is or isn’t something moving is irrelevant in the larger themes of the story. Todd’s move to his grandfather’s home is medical-related and, through eavesdropping on Todd’s phone conversations with sister Vera (Arielle Friedman) and Grandpa’s (Larry Feddenden) home movies, we learn a bit of the backstory of the family that implants the notion that, perhaps, what befalls Todd is greater than human understanding. The script doesn’t get into this much, difficult to do so within the confines of the narrative framework, yet Leonberg and Cannon are able to make it clear that the relationship between humanity and dog is deep, profound, and goes back generations wherein the early dog would help protect cave dwelling humans from threats. This information is intended to set up Indy as the grand protector of Todd against whatever the force is. While there’s little information given beyond its disquieting appearance and penchant for torturing Indy, what this reviewer intuits is Indy possesses the ability to see and hear beyond humanity’s limitations, thereby manifesting a form that seems to be stalking Todd but whose maleficence is unclear. Without getting into spoiler territory more than already for those who worry about animal cruelty in film, one read of Good Boy is as a story about how the tenuous and transitory existence humanity has is, in comparison to our canine companions, a millennia, so that when a terminal condition takes hold and the seemingly indomitable human is rend asunder by mere shadows, it can seem frightening to them. Through this lens, the love and devotion that Indy shows regardless of understanding makes all the danger appear amplified in a way that doesn’t come across in a typical supernatural tale because everything that Indy does is defined entirely by unending love.
Indy in GOOD BOY. Photo courtesy of What’s Wrong With Your Dog? LLC.
Across the world, there are a few dog names you can mention that will generate a near-instant response in certain circles: Lassie and Seymour. For the former, it’ll be Boomers, Gen X, and Elder Millennials who identify the name as the finder of lost Timmys in wells; which, with the latter, it’ll be Gen Xers and all Millennials reaching for tissues as they mourn the most devout companion to one of fiction’s more beloved idiots. For this reviewer, the pup who exemplifies all the qualities is Kaylee, specifically Kaylee Pearl Rattazzi Davidson, a mutt adopted in 2010 not even three months into her life. This sweet girl would be my steadfast companion through job hunting, moving into a home, growing deathly sick, becoming a parent, and more in between and after. She was the bestest girl with her sweet disposition, love of popcorn, and desire for cuddles from friends and strangers. Saying goodbye to her in December 2021 was one of the hardest things I’ve done and Good Boy brought a lot of those emotions back, not because of anything nefarious on the part of Leonberg, but because canines are too good for humanity, too pure, too full of love for what we offer them in exchange. This film won’t surprise anyone in the sense that Indy is exactly what one expects, the bestest boy, but it will, perhaps, cause you to reconsider your perspective of a canine’s world.
Good boy, Indy. Stay.
Screening during SXSW 2025.
In theaters October 3rd, 2025.
For more information, head either to the official Good Dog SXSW webpage or film website.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, In Theaters, Recommendation, Reviews
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