Review: Good Boy (2025)

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Perspective counts for a lot in a movie and when the perspective is tied to that of an adorable dog, it counts for even more. Good Boy is a run-of-the-mill haunted house movie, but it has a novel point of view: the entire film is fixed to the perspective of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Indy. And true to the title, Indy is a very good boy.

In the film, Indy’s owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), is suffering from an unknown disease and moves to his late grandfather’s old estate in the woods. There, Todd deteriorates by himself while Indy uncovers a sinister presence in the home. It’s weird to praise the performance of a dog playing himself, but Indy gives a genuinely good animal performance in Good Boy, one that makes the entire film worthwhile. He’s sympathetic, charismatic, and responsive. You can read so much in his large eyes, but it’s not just that he’s adorable: he actually holds our attention. We never hear his thoughts or get any kind of anthropomorphizing in Good Boy (there’s no talking dog here, thank God); rather, we just watch this dog on screen and follow him through a haunted house.

Apparently Indy had never performed in a movie before and the director (and Indy’s owner) Ben Leonberg claims that most of Indy’s performance is a result of the Kuleshov Effect. This effect is where editing creates the emotional connections on screen: if we see a shot of a man’s face, then a shot of a bell ringing, and then a shot of the same man looking up, we assume the man is reacting to the sound of the bell, even though they’re spatially separated on the screen. So in Good Boy, Leonberg uses this effect to help us read emotions on Indy; we see something scary in the room and then a close-up of Indy’s face. We assume he’s worried because we would be. However, this only explains half of the impact, since even in the shots where it’s just Indy alone on screen, with no other people or spooky things happening, he is shockingly calm and collected. He never seems like he’s just following commands from someone off camera. Rather, he seems to be genuinely reacting to what’s happening around him (much of which is CGI), which is remarkable, and clearly demonstrates some inherent talent in the dog, regardless of how he was trained or filmed.

Leonberg smartly ties the visual approach to Indy, so that he’s in almost every shot in the film. The camera is typically low to the ground near Indy’s eyeline. The faces of the human characters are obscured. Context is withheld. If Indy cannot see it within the physical space or understand it from his limited perspective, we don’t get it in Good Boy.

That means we also get to see some of the things that only Indy can see. Indy notices more than his owner thinks he does. Dogs are remarkably good at picking up on the emotions and physical wellbeing of their owners, and many paranormal stories mention the extraordinary intuition of pets. As Good Boy is a horror movie, Indy sees ghosts and demons. There are creepy nighttime scenes where Indy spots a shadowy presence trying to get to his owner. It all goes down a familiar path to other elevated horror films of the past decade, where the monster in the shadows seems to be an embodiment of the pain and trauma the lead human character is suffering, but the novelty of watching a dog attempt to intervene in such horror scenarios is novel and fun. There are also clever scenes where the ghost of the past owner’s dog visits Indy to warn him—I never thought that dogs could have their own spectral visitors, but it’s a brilliant extension of the fixed perspective of the film.

The human drama? Not as compelling. The actors have to do a lot of work relying on just their voices. Like too many performers in low-budget features, they’re not up to the task, overacting and failing to make the overwrought dialogue work. There’s a world where Good Boy would’ve been better as a silent film since its visual storytelling is strong. The film we get is notable primarily for its unique point of view and the genuinely dazzling dog in its lead. It’s a good idea, competently executed—more than enough to warrant a viewing some late night with your dog next to you on the couch.

6 out of 10

Good Boy (2025, USA)

Directed by Ben Leonberg; written by Alex Cannon and Ben Leonberg; starring Indy, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden.

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