Some ideas are so brilliant that they encourage a sort of mental double-take. The reaction where you are instantly sold by the million-dollar pitch, yet also amazed nobody else had already tried to do it before now. Good Boy, the debut feature by director/co-writer Ben Leonberg, has one such million-dollar pitch: a supernatural horror film where the protagonist is the hauntee’s loyal dog. Not a talking dog, not some kind of human whose spirit is trapped in a dog, not a dog who can do things like punch coppers in the face and a rappel out of office buildings through the power of movie magic. Just a regular dog; the director’s own retriever, Indy.
That’s the hard work done of hooking an audience, right there. It’s an elemental premise, playing off of the viewer’s perception of dogs as sweet beans of pure innocence we naturally want to see safe and happy, and unique, since it instantly provides a fresh constrained perspective on a sub-genre which is at risk of being run into the ground nowadays. Dogs are famously loyal, often quite clingy and protective, so how does it affect the tension when there’s a haunting with threats of possession coming between them and their human? They can communicate, but there’s an obvious language barrier that even the most bonded humans can sometimes struggle to understand and overcome, so is it even possible to warn the human when something’s amiss? How often have you noticed your own dog just stare off into the distance, or be drawn to some random-ass corner of the house, for seemingly no reason, like they can sense something otherworldly? And that’s just for the scare possibilities, the narrative and thematic possibilities are also untapped (at least in serious live-action terms, for anyone not already yelling about Courage the Cowardly Dog or Scooby-Doo).
To both its credit and mild disappointment, Leonberg’s Good Boy keeps it very simple. Indy (starring as himself) lives with his loving human Todd (Shane Jensen), sticking by his side through the good times and the low. Once Todd’s chronic lung disease flares up yet again, the pair disappear off-grid to a foreboding cabin in the woods where Todd’s grandfather lived and died. Almost as soon as they’ve arrived, Indy starts sensing that something is seriously off about the place, as if there’s some kind of malevolent presence just out of sight, struggling to figure out what that might be as his human’s condition starts to deteriorate.
Saying much more would completely give the game away since Leonberg and co-writer Alex Cannon keep things lean and straightforward, so you’ll almost certainly arrive at the central metaphor well before the film lays its cards fully on the table. But that’s not inherently a bad thing. That narrative and thematic simplicity means Good Boy is a much sadder film than one might expect, earning its emotional chain-choking from more existential fears rather than the visceral terror of a dog in peril. Despite the hauntings – and, to be clear, whilst we are operating in ‘horror as metaphor’ mode, there is an actual monster skulking about, although it’s more functional than creative – the horror comes from a cross-species fear of loneliness, powerlessness in the face of world-shattering change, and the difficulty in being able to accept that. It is upsetting, and those are the feelings which will linger after the credits roll divorced from the more genre trappings.
They’re solid horror trappings, mind. Leonberg commits to filming from the perspective of Indy and the only real ‘cheat’ he makes is allowing us to fully understand all of the spoken dialogue, rather than attempt to recreate or communicate the species language barrier. He and cinematographer Wade Grebnoel choose to keep the camera height almost exclusively at Indy’s level, low to the ground, with human faces out of focus or just off-camera. We follow Indy as he manoeuvres past furniture and obstacles on the trails he takes rather than cutting around them; stairways and the undersides of beds seem to stretch on forever even before the dark of night-time comes, and every single creak or thud or strange whine comes through crystal clear on the sound mix. Combined with Pawel Pogorzelski-esque compositions where the camera takes root in one specific place of a room and just holds for an extended period of time, maybe with a slow zoom-in to really play on the paranoia, it’s an effectively unnerving atmosphere. When Leonberg does finally engage a handful of jump scares, they’re well-earned and misdirect like a pro.
And yet, I wouldn’t call Good Boy all that scary. I am one of the easiest people in the world to scare and stress and unnerve but, whilst I definitely had my hackles raised in the early going and the jumps got me as intended, it does become apparent quite fast that Leonberg will stick to the same few techniques without much evolution. The first few times a lengthy slow-zoom shot into pitch-black darkness occurs as the audio goes all ambient only for nothing to come of it are anxiety-inducing. When that becomes an overwhelming percentage of film, with multiple scenes doing this same thing happening one after the other, it starts to feel repetitive and limited. The fear dissipates somewhat, briefly returns when a (again, real good) jump scare crops up, and then starts to lesson once more shortly after.
The same charge of “limited” can be levelled at the storytelling too. Aside from an admittedly-moving opening montage, not a whole lot of time or detail is invested in Todd and Indy’s relationship. Todd also doesn’t have much of a character or presence, already starting the story proper as somewhat distant and checked-out, so the ramping up of the hauntings and the deterioration of his health don’t represent as dramatic and heart-wrenching a change as they really could. Again, some of this can be explained away as a by-product of our POV being firmly through Indy rather than cheating any more than is necessary. But the execution keeps things general when more specificity could have really twisted the knife in a way that elevates the horror both thematically and practically.
Both the storytelling and the horror have undoubtedly been driven by the practicalities of Leonberg’s production. Good Boy is very low-budget, of course, but also had to work with Indy not being a trained actor; Leonberg effectively shot around his dog over several years to get the natural responses out of Indy that his film required. On the one hand, it is kind of hard to dispute this approach for Indy’s comfort, which takes precedence over everything, and for just how gosh darn excellent and convincing Indy’s performance looks on-camera. Yet, at the same time, it’s hard not to feel like we haven’t utilised this golden premise to its full potential. There’s not a whole lot of meat to these bones, even at 73 minutes. There is a thin line between keeping things simple and being kinda basic which Leonberg’s film dances on precariously.
That said, the ending has been weighing on my mind a lot over the last few days. As a dog owner and somebody whose mind goes to distressing places unprompted from time to time, I can already tell that if I had caught Good Boy on a different day then there’s a high chance it would have utterly destroyed me. To a degree, whilst still somewhat satisfying straightforward-ish genre fans with its strong atmosphere and eventual refusal to act like it’s too good for proper jumps and stuff, Leonberg’s film is aiming for something different than what one might expect from the golden premise. A more soulful, upsetting, haunting tale about the limits of what unconditional love can achieve and a painful battle with despair which certainly is tied to our relationship with dogs but can also resonate for non-dog people too.
Good Boy, at least on this watch, may not be the properly great film its million-dollar premise evinces, but it is a very good one. I hope Indy is getting all the belly-rubs and treats he wants.
Good Boy is in UK cinemas nationwide now. This review was made possible thanks to a screener provided by the film’s UK distributor, Vertigo Releasing.
