Good Boy is a smart and surprisingly moving film that pushes the boundaries of how we experience the horror genre. On the surface, it's a very traditional haunted house story, only told through the eyes of a devoted canine companion. In lesser hands, it could easily turn into a mawkish and off-putting exercise in manipulation.
Instead, thanks to smart directing and writing and one of the finest leading performances all year from Indy the dog, Good Boy proves this genre still has a vastness of unexplored territory left in it.
Our hero is Indy the dog, a beloved member of the family, whose owner is dying. Indy, of course, doesn't understand the how and the why of things, only that something is wrong. In a last minute attempt to control their life, Indy's owner moves to their old family home, where all the men in their family have lived and died.
Indy, sensing an unnatural presence around the house, seeks to warn his human, but to no avail. As time begins to run out, Indy must find a way to save his family before they're consumed by the darkness living in the house.
Right away, it's clear director Ben Leonberg understands this genre so well that toying with it comes second nature to him. Every familiar trope and scare feels new because we're quite literally seeing it with fresh eyes. By moving the focus to Indy's point of view, we find a whole new appreciation and fear for things that go bump in the night.
This also allows for familiar scares to become unknowable once again. Horror is all about perspective and the perversion of the natural world. We understand how things are supposed to work, so when they do the opposite, it scares us. By sticking with Indy, we're forced to understand that which he doesn't, and by extension empathise even further as we project our love for animals into the film.
Yes, it is manipulative, and exquisitely so. It is the most effective use of a lovable protagonist in years. I can't imagine anyone going into the film wanting to see Indy get hurt. Instead of making the film less scary as a result, it amps up the stakes even further. We want Indy to succeed no matter what, but we also know that even without the existence of the paranormal, the world is not kind to good and beautiful things like dogs.
At just 72 minutes in length, Good Boy is precisely as long as it can be. Anything more and we'd start to focus on the tricks instead of the emotions. Leonberg finds his conclusion in an emotionally devastating and poignant beat that at first feels abrupt, only to reveal itself as an honest reversal of so many truths we experience with animals we let into our lives.
For those sensitive to danger directed at pets, Good Boy might prove a little too intense of an experience. It's not gory nor particularly violent. In fact, it's one of the most classy and traditional horror pictures in a long while. But because Leonberg relies on the strengths that darkness and imagination bring, the results are often more terrifying because our expectations fill in the blanks. It is awful to hear a dog whimper when we can't see what's wrong, and Leonberg knows it.
But a good horror film should extract emotion out of its audience. This is a genre that lives on immediate rections, and Good Boy delivers on that in spades.
It is one of the most startlingly original and fun experiences all year that reminds us how lucky we are to have dogs in our lives.
