Film Review — Good Boy

Please, can we give a dog an Oscar? Indy, the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever star of Good Boy, certainly deserves one for his outstanding performance in director Ben Leonberg’s innovative spooky horror gem. Telling a story entirely from a canine point of view isn’t necessarily something new in cinema. Disney has been at it for decades, as seen in films like The Incredible Journey (1963). But I’m surprised no one has ever tried it in a horror film.

The idea that dogs can see things beyond the human spectrum of vision is a familiar one. Here, Leonberg and co-writer Alex Cannon use this premise as the basis for an entire film, with Indy able to see the malevolent entity slowly closing in on his master, Todd (Shane Jensen), whilst he cannot. Suffering from chronic lung diseases, Todd decides to relocate from New York City to his grandfather’s remote house in the middle of the woods, much to the chagrin of his sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman), who constantly telephones to check up on him.

Todd is determined to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and live out his life in this house despite rumours that he went a bit funny in the head (rumours hinted at in a plethora of home video tapes discovered in the…