REVIEW: ‘Good Boy’ Showcases Innovation Through Simplicity

My dog is my world. We’ve been together for 11 years now, and every year I realize more and more how to her, I am just as much a responsibility as she is to me. Good Boy (2025) picks up on that loyalty and devotion and uses it to create tension and terror at the same time. 

An IFC-distributed film, Good Boy is directed by Ben Leonberg and written by Leonberg and Alex Cannon, and stars only five actors, four of whom are: Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Stuart Rudin, and Larry Fessenden. But it’s the fourth that is the most important, Indy, the retriever mix, and the movie’s main subject. 

You see, in Good Boy, we follow Indy and his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), as they move into a new house. The house is Todd’s grandfather’s estate, and the kicker is that he died there. The longer that the two are there, the more the danger in the house comes into perspective. His grandfather died there, and there is a big chance that they will too. 

Good Boy tells a horror story through a dog’s perspective, and it’s more than a gimmick. 

Good Boy’s story is told through Indy’s eyes and his ears. Instead of having crisp close-up monologues, exposition and narrative are instead delivered in passing. Indy sits in the car as we hear a muffled conversation between Todd and his sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman), about the house and their grandfather.

We see Indy start to become frantic, sitting in the doctor’s office, as Todd gets a tragic medical diagnosis. We feel the world as Indy does, and that’s what makes Good Boy so unsettling. 

It isn’t just that we hear the story delivered through what Indy hears; it’s that the situations get coated in his emotions, too. The cheesy saying that, to us, dogs are a part of our lives, and for them, we are their whole lives, weighs heavily as the film gets darker. 

The house, as seen from the knee-height perspective of a dog, feels even more oppressive and overwhelming. Indy can see in places that Todd can’t, and that means that he can feel the presence and is targeted by it as it takes a more corporeal form throughout the film’s short but perfectly paced runtime. Indy has more knowledge of the devolving situation than Todd does, but he can’t do anything. 

Instead, as Indy gets more frightened and unruly, he’s thrown outside. But Indy fights like hell to make it back to his owner, and throughout it all, the audience feels fear, but also the sadness and the love he sees the world through. 

Like a lot of horror, the presence in the house isn’t all there is to see. Instead, the ghostly apparition following Todd and Indy is a disease. It’s the knowledge that Todd doesn’t have too much time left. And ultimately, the reason I kept crying as the movie ended is that Indy’s role in Good Boy is that of a protector who just can’t stop mortality. 

Good Boy taps into the relationship that a dog has with its owner, doing so to put its audience into constant tension. By limiting the camera’s field of vision to what Indy sees, Good Boy restricts our understanding of the house and the potential danger it may pose. Instead of being shown the horror, we are allowed to infer it, and if you’re a dog parent, every darkened area becomes a threat. 

Indy gives one of the best performances of the year, and he’s only a dog. 

The movie uses the relationship we have with our pets to the fullest, to scare us but also to create a deep empathy between our spot in the audience and the dog on screen. Even moments when Todd is frustrated with Indy and pushes him away or reacts harshly, we can see ourselves in that. And as the audience, we know that Indy is just scared, worried, and trying to protect the man who is his world. 

The use of practical effects accentuates the film’s tension; additionally, the camera’s restricted vision makes everything off-screen even more terrifying than what we see. Indy’s perspective is heartbreaking and brave, but more importantly, it highlights a view of the world we just don’t see, and yet it’s extremely easy to understand. 

Between a minimalist script and an approach to cinematography and how each scene is framed, the world is shown in its barest state. There is no pomp and circumstance; there is just a man and his dog, and the need for the latter to save the former. There is a tenderness with which Indy sees the world, and that’s what makes the film all the more intense. 

Unlike with human actors, a dog can’t clearly understand direction, can’t really be told what emotions to show, and presents a directorial challenge when it comes to keeping tone. However, in Good Boy, Indy is an emotional powerhouse. His scrunched brow ridge, his tail, and even how he moves with caution. But it’s made even more shocking when you remember that Indy in the film is just Indy.

He has no concept of the imaginary, and that’s why everything we see from him is intensely genuine. While animal actors are nothing new, the fact that Indy’s performance isn’t aided by CGI and is just the director capturing his dog at exactly the right moment makes the success of Good Boy all the more astonishing. 

It feels weird to say that Indy is one of my favorite performances of the year. He’s a dog, after all. But he is the heart of the film, the reason for its success, and for how it pushes horror by changing perspective. Good Boy showcases the innovation that comes from restrictions. 

Good Boy is a simple concept but an emotionally layered horror movie. 

Good Boy is just over an hour and 20 minutes, but it makes every single minute on screen matter. There are no frills and no eccentricities, and the dog’s perspective proves to be so much more narratively than a gimmick. This is one of those very few films where I would change absolutely nothing, and ultimately wonder how Ben Leonberg crafted a movie that understands the depth of our bonds with our pets so deeply. 

Not only that, as a debut film, Ben Leonberg showcases how well he understands how to exploit positive human emotions into terror, and that’s central to horror filmmaking. If this is the kind of understanding of humanity that Leonberg has in terms of direction, then I need to see more. Good Boy is such an excellent example of using love to build fear, but to do so without dishonoring what it means to truly care for someone. 

Good Boy is an exercise in simplicity and a testament to the fact that good horror is built on empathy. And for us, in the audience, we could only be so lucky to have a dog in our lives like Indy. And if we do, that’s what makes Good Boy a homerun. 

Good Boy is streaming now on Shudder and AMC+, and is available to rent on VOD.