My greatest fear when walking into Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy was that it would ultimately turn out to be like Jason Eisener’s segment in V/H/S 2, which was a thoroughly nasty little bit of found-footage that ends in a (perhaps appropriately, given the subject matter) apocalyptic fashion that nevertheless had me wanting to put three rounds into the screen like I was Elvis trying to change the channel. That short — an outgrowth of the “let’s mount a camera to Fido” YouTube video applied to an alien invasion — ended with the dog dying, and it took me 10 years to even vaguely consider giving another one of those movies a shot on streaming (from what I hear, I didn’t miss much until Beyond). Like any red-blooded human being, I hate seeing bad shit happen to animals on screen, which is why I was never once able to enjoy The Boondock Saints and still hold a grudge against Jason Yu for what he did to Pepper, the poor Pomeranian in his film Sleep. Apparently, enough folks were worried after seeing the trailer that searches for “does the dog die in good boy” trended on Google, and IFC wound up releasing a PSA to let the world know that yes, Indy, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who leads the film and is, in his regular life, Leonberg’s pet, makes it to the adorable end-credits montage. If you’re going to spend three years crafting a 73-minute horror tribute to your dog’s eternal affection and care for you, as Leonberg did here, you’re most likely not going to kill off the talent and undermine the whole message.
That said, whoever marked Good Boy as a “comedy” on Google should brace themselves for a wave of boos and jeers – part of what makes Leonberg’s feature so appealing is how seriously it takes its premise (not to mention the fact that, unless prompted and cued by talking-animal bullshit, most folks will be too scared for the little guy’s safety to be laughing). It’s a haunted house movie, one with a particularly tragic premise. Indy’s owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), is sick – he has some unspecified respiratory issue – and after a final stint in the hospital, he goes out to his grandfather’s old cabin to live what may be his last days in peace away from all of the stresses of the city. Grandad (Larry Fessenden) had a similar illness before he died, and died with his dog Bandit at his side, the only witness to the supernatural element that may have contributed to his demise.
Indy can tell something’s wrong right away when they get to the cabin, and Todd’s mystified as to why his usually peppy pup is so reticent to get out of his SUV’s passenger seat. His instincts, as we will come to discover, are often right on the money, given that his enhanced senses can detect something lurking in the corners of empty rooms. His owner can’t see the shadowy presence that’s stalking them both, but Indy sure can, and he can smell the fear on Bandit’s bandana, found behind a dresser, or on Grandad’s easy chair. Moreover, he starts to notice what the specter is doing to Todd – taking his sunny disposition and turning it into something crueler as the human wastes away. Is it the ghost causing the trouble? Is it just the final dregs of this horrible illness? There’s an answer, but it won’t come until it’s nearly too late, and the dog lovers in the audience have already pulled out their tissue travel packs.
Good Boy operates on a similar wavelength to In a Violent Nature, distributor-mate Shudder’s 2024 avant-garde slasher, in terms of its willingness to patiently follow its lead character through its various horrors, though I doubt there will be as much disappointment as there was when that shit hit horror fans. But, like that feature, it’s hypnotic in the way that it unfolds, grabbing your attention from the first frame and keeping you locked in, legitimately concerned for this (fictional) dog’s safety while you’re entranced with the craft. The film’s crowning achievement — the astonishing performance Leonberg managed to coax out of Indy — wouldn’t be nearly as effective if there weren’t a brilliantly blocked and shot feature surrounding it. This is a genuinely beautiful movie, with steady camerawork (I can only imagine how long it took to storyboard) and purposeful, intelligent editing. Yet it’s not particularly self-indulgent as, given the nature of the shoot, they really couldn’t afford to be – it’s 73 minutes long for good reason as, beyond concerns of practicality, it doesn’t want to wear out its welcome. Leonberg doesn’t have time for cutesy bullshit: he only wants to process exactly what makes up the bizarre and magical bond between human and animal in loving, effective metaphor.
Leonberg’s ethos behind the project is fascinating – using supernatural evil to highlight the almost otherworldly affection shown to Todd by his pet: a creature who will never, ever let him down, no matter what happens or how he feels. The whole “we don’t deserve dogs” saying can be tritely rendered into a greeting card or plaque you can buy at a TJ Max, but there’s truth to it. For all of the miserable things about human existence, the fact that there are creatures – be it a dog or a cat or a rabbit or hamster or so on and so forth – whose care for us extends beyond the fact that we feed them and give them attention acts as a strange counter to the idea that our existence is irredeemable, that we’re damned wretches unworthy of love by some inherent flaw. It’s a relationship that can transcend death, after all, given that dogs have fantastic memories — a surreal devotion that slips beyond a lifetime, often being more than we’re worth but precisely what we need. It’s in this meaning that Good Boy stops being merely a good gimmick picture (isn’t that what all cinema is, anyhow?), and turns into sublime, poetic horror.