Lean, eerie, and moving, Good Boy is proof that horror doesn’t need to bark to bite — sometimes it just needs to look up at you and whimper.
Every horror director wants a fresh angle, but few dare to film one literally from the floor. Enter Good Boy, the low-budget stunner from filmmaker Ben Leonberg, which makes a dog its protagonist and emotional compass. It’s an audacious, haunted-house movie that sneaks up on you—not with jump scares, but with loyalty, grief, helplessness, and a pair of soulful canine eyes that see what we can’t.
Todd (Shane Jensen) moves into his late family’s countryside home with his dog Indy—played, in an inspired twist, by Leonberg’s own pooch. What begins as a quiet escape quickly turns unnerving as Indy senses a presence that Todd refuses to acknowledge. Shadows twitch, hallways breathe, doors whisper. The real trick is that we see it all from Indy’s perspective—eye-level shots, heavy breathing, padded footsteps on creaking wood.
There’s no talking dog, no cutesy anthropomorphism. Indy doesn’t crack jokes or solve mysteries. He observes, reacts, and worries, which somehow makes the tension sharper. When he cowers at the darkness, we do too. When he growls at nothing, we lean forward.
The fear you feel when you can’t speak
That’s Good Boy’s secret weapon: empathy. By stripping away language, Leonberg forces the audience to experience terror in its purest form — instinctive, primal, and silent. Indy becomes both audience surrogate and emotional anchor. His devotion to Todd gives the movie its heart; his confusion and helplessness gives it its tragedy.
While the film runs short at 70 minutes, its pacing is deliberately unhurried, almost meditative. Leonberg relies on sound design—the scratch of claws on wood, the hiss of distant wind—to generate unease. It’s less about what’s in the shadows and more about how the silence stretches until you start inventing monsters of your own. The tropes are recognizable, even commonplace. However, their effectiveness lie when told by fresh eyes—that of a dog’s.
A masterclass in restrained horror
Shot almost entirely at dog height, the film is a masterclass in perspective. Ordinary rooms suddenly feel cavernous and strange. Furniture looms like monuments. A staircase becomes a mountain. You don’t realize how much you depend on human scale until you lose it.
Cinematographer Josh Berg’s lens turns simplicity into suspense, proving that terror doesn’t require elaborate effects — only good framing and patience. There’s a hypnotic rhythm to the visuals, somewhere between a nature documentary and a waking nightmare.
The heart beneath the horror
As the supernatural encroaches, the story quietly shifts from haunted-house tropes to emotional allegory. Todd’s descent into paranoia mirrors Indy’s growing desperation to protect him. You can read the ghost as grief, madness, or metaphor—the film never confirms it, and that ambiguity is what keeps it gnawing at you.
What lingers after the credits isn’t the fear of what’s in the basement, but the heartbreak of watching devotion meet helplessness. Good Boy isn’t about a monster in the dark — it’s about how love endures when logic collapses.
Where it stumbles
Like many concept films, Good Boy occasionally overplays its hand. The middle act drags, recycling the same corridor scares once too often. The final reveal lands softly when you crave something bolder. But even then, the mood never breaks; it just slows its heartbeat.
There are horror films when matters left unmentioned, unexplored, leave lingering questions to the audience long after the credits roll. However, this movie was so focused on Indy’s plight that it felt as if the paranormal element was just slapped in as an excuse. There was no context whatsoever.
For a film made on a shoestring, Leonberg’s restraint is impressive. He knows exactly when to hold the shot and when to let silence do the talking. The small missteps feel like growing pains from a filmmaker who’s clearly got vision—and guts.
Four paws up
Good Boy may sound like a gimmick, but it’s one of 2025’s most original horror experiences — a film that proves you don’t need gore, CGI, or quippy teens to feel dread in your bones. It’s quiet horror at its finest: intimate, emotional, and steeped in atmosphere.
Indy delivers the best animal performance since The Thing’s dog, and Jensen’s fragile, unraveling Todd gives the film its human ache. Together, they make Good Boy not just a clever experiment, but a haunting meditation on loyalty and loss.
Rating: 4/5
