Reviews For The Easily Distracted: Good Boy

Title: Good Boy
Describe This Movie Using One Billy Madison Quote:
BILLY:  If your dog goes missing you don’t look for an hour and then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fuckin’ dog!
Brief Plot Synopsis: Can you give Best Actor to a dog?
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4 “Jurassic Barks” out of 5.

Tagline: “Trust his instincts.”
Better Tagline: “You think a cat would stick around for this shit?”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Against the advice of his sister Vera (Arielle Friedman), Todd (Shane Jensen) decides that going to his grandfather’s old house in the woods is just the thing to recuperate after a hospital stay brought on by his recurring illness. Todd and Vera’s grandfather (Larry Fessenden) died in the house under mysterious circumstances, of course, and Todd’s dog Indy realizes things are not what they seem in spite of his master’s obliviousness.

“Critical” Analysis: In a recent episode of the We Hate Movies podcast, the hosts talk about the first Conjuring movie. A throwaway part of the discussion (centered on how James Wan created a nifty horror movie in spite of what frauds the Warrens were) was the idea of using a dog as part of your pre-home buying inspection. The reasoning being that the Australian shepherd in the movie, Sadie, refused to enter that film’s haunted house. With good reason, as it turns out. After all, if you’re going to cough up for a guy to look at the foundation, would it hurt to bring in man’s best friend for a paranormal sniff-around?

Whether we’d pay attention is another question entirely. Enter “Indy,” writer/director Ben Leonberg’s own Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever and the star of Good Boy. And I’d be hard pressed to think of a better performance in a recent horror movie aside from Michael B. Jordan in Sinners. He’s comfortable enough on camera that Leonberg draws suspense out of nothing more than Indy walking through the darkened house, snuffling after whatever is going bump in the night. It’s so natural that you have to remind yourself this was filmed without using any CGI.

The dog, for his part, seems remarkably chill when confronted with phantom figures and disturbing noises emanating from the cellar. Or maybe that’s just in comparison to my dog, who would lose his ever loving mind in the same circumstances.

Indy’s loyalty to Todd (whose face we never see, except in reflection or on a screen, until the end) is all the more remarkable considering his owner is kind of an idiot. Todd has no business being out of a hospital, much less living out in the woods in a run-down, leaky ass house. And it’s Indy’s devotion, coupled with Vera’s (admittedly heavy-handed) concern, is what makes what ultimately transpires so heartbreaking.

You might think a feature-length movie would stretch our patience for a dog-centric narrative, and you’d be right. So it’s a good thing Leonberg brings everything in under 74 minutes. The only human who gets significant face time is Fessenden, and that’s almost entirely captured on the grandfather’s increasingly unhinged old VHS tapes. Everything else is Indy.

Good Boy automatically goes into the upper echelon of cinematic dog performances. In fact, the only other I can think of that even comes close is Jed the wolf/Malamute hybrid from The Thing (who’s only in the movie for 20 minutes). Or maybe Skippy, who played Asta in the Thin Man movies.

But a dog in the lead role is just a gimmick if there’s not a solid film around it, and Leonberg never lets Good Boy descend into what could just as easily been a horror-comedy. It’s tense and atmospheric, and there are enough jolts in there to keep you off balance, whether you’re concerned about Indy’s eventual fate or not (short answer: not to worry).

Good Boy is in theaters today.

This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.

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