Good Boy
Good Boy
A loyal dog moves to a rural family home with his owner Todd, only to discover supernatural forces lurking in the shadows. As dark entities threaten his human companion, the brave pup must fight to protect the one he loves most.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 1, 2025
It’s honestly wild that Good Boy is the first movie to fully commit to telling a ghost story from the perspective of a family dog. We’ve all seen our pets stare at an empty corner a little too long, their eyes tracking something we can’t see, and Good Boy takes that unnerving phenomenon and runs with it—on all fours.
Ben Leonberg directs this clever supernatural horror entirely from the eye level of Indy, a good boy in every sense of the word, who would absolutely win SXSW’s hypothetical Palme d’og if such an award existed. The film follows Todd, who moves into a rural family home with Indy in tow, only for the loyal pup to immediately start sensing something lurking in the shadows. While Todd remains preoccupied and unaware, Indy watches, sniffs, and reacts to the presence of something sinister that refuses to reveal itself fully. This perspective turns every empty hallway, every darkened corner, and every pricked ear into an exercise in slow-building dread. It also means that the faces of the human characters are often out of frame, which only adds to the disorienting nature of the film—making the world feel unfamiliar and eerie, even when nothing overtly supernatural is happening.
If I had one complaint, it’s that I would’ve loved a few more legitimate jump scares. The film is tense, and it builds atmosphere beautifully, and it does have some really effective scares, but I kept waiting for just a few more jolts to get the heart racing. That said, Good Boy is still a pretty damn cool horror film, and I could easily see this concept launching a whole new horror subgenre the way The Blair Witch Project propelled found footage into the stratosphere. A simple, brilliant idea executed extremely well.