The Absolute Most Unexpected Terrifying Feature of 2025 Originated From a Very Personal Dread
Good Boy represents a horror movie distinct from all others. Audiences have witnessed haunted house movies, but as opposed to highlighting screaming teens or fearless ghost investigators, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of a dog. (A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, to be precise.) In Good Boy, Indy the pup is tasked with defending his owner as supernatural forces close in on their remote cabin.
Initially planned for a limited release, this fast-paced, 90-minute thriller got a wide release after its trailer went viral, with people flocking to search engines to find out if Indy survives. We won't spoil the ending here, but should you be interested where the idea for Good Boy came from in the first place, the details are provided.
The Creative Spark Behind the Film
Debut filmmaker Ben Leonberg, who’s also the real-life owner of Indy, explains he aimed to create this movie to delve into the fears that every dog owner shares.
“I think it originates from a thought or maybe worry every dog owner has had, which is, ‘Why is my dog barking at nothing or staring at nothing?’” Leonberg comments. “There's probably a perfectly valid reason for that, but the human imagination inevitably considers the worst, think ghosts. I wanted to exploit that anxiety. Then, in the screenwriting and filming process, it was determining how to tell a story that really adheres to that perspective, where we're limited to everything the dog can even understand as a way to have this narrative unfold.”
Good Boy is groundbreaking in the best way, engaging spectators immediately with a protagonist you inevitably care for and root for, does well with exposition, and makes use of offhand dialogue from other characters, especially since our protagonist can’t talk.
Building the Animal's Narrative
Leonberg asserts that his dog isn’t giving a performance, but rather it's the creative skill of the film that gives life to each scene. Indy is one of the most innocent protagonists in film history, and this fact is fully appreciated by its director.
“I think Indy, probably all dogs, all animals, are a sort of hack for pulling on an audience's heartstrings because they are innocent,” Leonberg observes. “They don't know they're in the movie. And there's a really interesting lesson just about performance, that he's not performing. I can't say that enough, he does not know he was in a movie, but through filmmaking, the sound design, the music, the shots, the lighting, you can effectively express an emotion and a feeling on his — what are otherwise neutral expressions — and the audience will project a performance onto him. I think that genuinely is how most of the movie works: the filmmaking is telling the audience how to feel, and then they're putting that emotion on. He's listening to us just make silly noises on set. And the audience says, Wow, I'm scared. So the dog must be scared. He's not. He's just trying to figure out what his mom and dad are doing.”
Right down to the breed of dog, everything was meticulously thought out to fuel audience reactions.
“I think we relate to a dog like Indy,” Leonberg says, gesturing to the pet sitting behind him. “He's not very big, he's only 19 inches high. The camera resides 19 inches off the ground, which was challenging in filmmaking. But I don't know if you would want a big Cujo St Bernard; that would be such a intimidating challenger for the supernatural.”
Indy is a bit small when it comes to beasts that might fight the supernatural.
“How could he possibly succeed? That's really good for a story,” Leonberg remarks. “Also stinking cute.”
Good Boy is in theaters now.
