Good Boy (2025) Review: A Haunting Horror Told Through a Dog’s Eyes

Release Date: Theatrical release (U.S.) — October 3, 2025 (festival premiere at SXSW March 10, 2025)

Runtime: 73 minutes (1 hr 13 min)

Rated: PG-13 — for terror, bloody images and strong language

Production Companies: What’s Wrong With Your Dog? (Leonberg / Fischer indie credit) — distributed in English territories by Shudder / IFC (Independent Film Company)

Producers: Ben Leonberg and Kari Fischer

Cinematography: Wade Grebnoel

Editing: Curtis Roberts

Music / Composer: Sam Boase-Miller

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Director: Ben Leonberg

Writer(s): Ben Leonberg and Alex Cannon

Starring: Indy (the dog), Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden (supporting role)

The uniqueness of Good Boy lies in its bold perspective: the film places us squarely in the world of Indy, our canine protagonist. Instead of merely presenting a haunted house story through human eyes, Ben Leonberg asks us to experience it through paws, not shoes. We aren’t just watching Indy — we’re beside him, riding shotgun as he navigates the strange, sinister occurrences that plague his home. The result is a story that feels both familiar and uncanny: we recognize the beats of a ghost story, but we perceive them filtered through an animal’s instincts.

Visually, the film is gorgeous, even when it leans into its most unnerving imagery. Leonberg balances painterly woods and cabin interiors with sudden, jolting intrusions of menace, many of which catch Indy (and us) by surprise. Yet the most remarkable element is Indy himself. A so-called “non-professional” actor, Indy isn’t performing in the Hollywood sense — the film was built around his natural behavior. Rather than forcing him into artificial situations, Leonberg and producer Kari Fischer staged environments and waited for real reactions. The process took years to capture, and it shows: Indy’s movements, hesitations, and moments of focus feel instinctual because they are. That authenticity is what makes this film not only unique on-screen but also extraordinary behind the lens. It’s as if Leonberg designed a horror film for other dogs — and against all odds, the experiment works.

The story follows Todd (Shane Jensen), who retreats to his childhood cabin in the woods with Indy at his side. As they settle in, Indy begins sensing — and seeing — a presence, some malevolent figure that hovers just beyond human perception. At the same time, Todd himself begins to change, showing increasingly strange and unsettling behaviors. This dual descent forces Indy (and by extension, the audience) to try to understand what’s happening with nothing more than his instincts and his bond with his owner.

Some viewers will undoubtedly struggle with the pacing. At just 73 minutes, the film is short by modern standards, yet it stretches time in unexpected ways. Much of the runtime places us in Indy’s world as he wanders, explores, and waits. In those stretches, he often appears helpless, boxed in by the limits of his canine existence. But those same limitations deliver the film’s most emotional beats: moments of loyalty, fear, and protectiveness that land harder because Indy has no language to explain them. His silence — his inability to intervene as a human might — becomes its own form of tension.

The human cast — Jensen, Arielle Friedman, and indie horror veteran Larry Fessenden — anchor the narrative. They provide the backstory, the lore of Todd’s family ties, and the emotional scaffolding around the supernatural. Still, the truth is that every performance exists in orbit around Indy. If the human acting feels flat at times or fades into irrelevance, it’s by design: the heartbeat of this film is the dog. The discourse surrounding Indy’s “performance” is well-earned — it is both spectacular and singular. It’s almost shocking that cinema has taken this long to deliver a horror film truly from a dog’s point of view, but when it finally arrived, it did so with a career-defining turn from Indy himself.

The cabin setting enhances the intimacy of the story. It might seem small or restrictive at first, but Leonberg uses it to frame the woods, layering in shots of haunting natural beauty and subtle family history. Through quiet details — an old neighborhood connection, Todd’s upbringing, fragments of lore — the setting feels less like a backdrop and more like an extension of the haunting itself. The pacing, often criticized, feels intentional: a reflection of how a dog experiences the world. Where humans might rush through, filling silence with distraction, a dog lingers, notices, waits. The film demands that we do the same. If it feels slow, maybe that says less about the filmmakers and more about an audience conditioned to scroll and swipe rather than sit in stillness.

In the end, Good Boy pushes against conventional storytelling. Its concept is simple, but its execution is daring: haunting cinematography, an eerie yet emotional environment, and above all, the sheer presence of Indy. As a pet owner myself, I found the emotional stakes heartbreaking. The bond between Indy and Todd — rendered through quiet moments of care, confusion, and unspoken love — is among the most affecting relationships I’ve seen on screen this year. Indy isn’t just acting his furry butt off; he’s embodying the loyalty and helplessness that define the human-pet relationship.

Ultimately, Good Boy delivers an unorthodox horror tale with striking resonance. In its 73 minutes, Leonberg explores loyalty, helplessness, death, and companionship through the eyes of a creature who has no voice but who feels everything. It may not be perfect, but its imperfections are part of its raw charm. The concept alone set Leonberg up for success, but his patience — years of filming with his own best friend — allowed the film to become something deeper. The result is one of the most visually beautiful, emotionally piercing, and quietly haunting films of the year.