Loyalty Becomes the Last Line of Defense

Read Time:5 Minute, 59 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Good Boy
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Genre: Horror, Thriller
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 13m
Director(s): Ben Leonberg
Writer(s): Alex Cannon, Ben Leonberg
Cast: Indy the Dog, Shane Jensen, Arielle Friedman, Larry Fessenden, Stuart Rudin, Anya Krawcheck
Where to Watch: in theaters October 3, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: GOOD BOY takes a premise that seems almost too simple—experience a haunting through a dog’s eyes—and treats it with a straight face and a careful hand. The result is a lean, tactile thriller where the camera crouches to floor level, the edges of the frame feel unsafe, and every empty corner becomes a question. Ben Leonberg’s film lives or dies by the honesty of that point of view, and it largely lives: not by turning the dog into a human surrogate with quippy inner thoughts, but by building a level of attention—ear twitches, held stares, cautious steps—that the audience learns to read. It’s a clever gambit executed without cheats, and it gives the familiar haunted-house shape a freshness.

Todd relocates to a rural family home with his best friend, Indy. The house is quiet, a little too still, the kind of location that feels like it resents being reoccupied. From the first minutes, GOOD BOY tells us two things: Indy is wary of the space, and his devotion to Todd is non-negotiable. Those truths power the entire movie. When the atmosphere thickens—shifts in air, unexplained noises, patterns Indy perceives before Todd can—what we’re watching is a companion becoming a protector. The film isn’t really about a mystery that can be solved with a single clue; it’s about the slow recognition that something old and unfriendly wants a piece of the living, and the only creature who understands that in time is the dog.

The filmmaking discipline is the headline here. Leonberg’s camera placement denies easy coverage, forcing scenes to play from the floor up and often with obstructed sightlines. That constraint does two things. First, it makes the house feel present and unknowable; the lens never cheats to a “god’s-eye” view to explain where danger lurks. Second, it turns the audience into a partner in vigilance. You start scanning the dark corners before Indy does. When a hallway breathes, tension arrives because you’ve been trained to expect it, not because of a sudden audio sting. That patience gives the film’s scares their bite.

Indy’s performance—if that’s even the right word—anchors the piece. There’s no anthropomorphic flourish here. The dog reacts, waits, follows, retreats. The film builds sequences around small, specific behaviors: a stare that won’t break, a paw that won’t cross a threshold, the way a head cocks as sound bounces in the room. Because Leonberg refuses to overexplain, those behaviors accumulate meaning. By the midpoint, a silence from Indy is as articulate as dialogue. It’s a smart way to keep the dog a dog while still shaping character and arc.

On the human side, Shane Jensen’s Todd is written with just enough shading to show without seizing control of the narrative. Arielle Friedman adds needed contrast, and Larry Fessenden’s presence deepens the texture—his face and cadence carry decades of genre muscle memory. But the movie wisely resists turning any of them into exposition engines. When Todd begins to slip, it isn’t solved by a speech; the bond with Indy has to do the heavy lifting.

Sound design is the movie’s secret weapon: tiny movements in the walls, low-frequency sighs that could be plumbing or something else, paw pads on hardwood that telegraph unease. The score supports without overwhelming, letting drones and pulses sit under the room like a second heartbeat. The runtime helps; at 73 minutes, there’s no room for excess. The film is a masterclass in cutting to what matters and trusting negative space. Even a simple shot of Indy waiting—day to night to day—lands with force because the film has earned your patience.

GOOD BOY is also unexpectedly tender. Not sentimental in a way that softens the edges, but quietly honest about how pets hold people together when everything else thins out. The devotion in Indy’s gaze is the movie’s spine; the fear that gaze will one day fall on nothing is the movie’s ache. When the supernatural pressure peaks, the stake isn’t merely survival; it’s the possibility that loyalty might not be enough this time. That’s where the film finds its heaviest punch: the idea that love can’t always negotiate with whatever lives in the dark.

This is a smart, distinctive riff on the haunted-house tradition. Tell the story from a place no one else has, refuse to bend from that vantage, build tension from attention rather than volume, and let the emotional core be as simple as a dog refusing to leave his person. It’s a small film with a confident identity. The scares won’t rattle everyone the same way, and the minimalism might leave some wishing for a bigger final movement, but the clarity of vision is undeniable. It’s rare to see a film commit to a constraint this hard and still feel generous.

Where does that land? Solidly in the “recommend” tier—especially for unique genre horror fans, animal lovers who can handle some anguish, and anyone who appreciates a clean, original angle executed with care. It’s not trying to be the loudest film of the season; it’s trying to be the one that sits at the edge of your living room after midnight and makes you look twice at the hallway. On those terms, it delivers.

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[photo courtesy of IFC, SHUDDER]

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