Good Boy

Telling a horror film almost entirely from a dog's point of view is such a simple idea that its effectiveness can be surprising. If he becomes nervous, we become nervous too. Good Boy understands that connection from the beginning, making Indy not only the protagonist but the main reason we care about what happens.

It helps enormously that he is such an affectionate and expressive dog. It is almost impossible not to become attached to him immediately. That makes every moment when he stares at an empty corner, refuses to move forward or suddenly becomes tense feel like an alarm going off.

Todd moves with him into an old family house, and it soon becomes clear that Indy can perceive something his owner cannot. Ben Leonberg's smartest decision is refusing to humanise the dog excessively. Indy does not talk and does not suddenly become a supernatural detective. He remains a dog. He watches, smells, listens, waits and reacts.

That gives the horror a different logic. We do not fully understand what is happening either because much of the information is limited to what Indy can perceive. If Todd disappears into another room, Indy cannot know what happens behind the door. If something moves outside his field of vision, we only have his reaction. When he begins recognising patterns connecting the present with what happened previously in the house, the result becomes especially unsettling.

At one point Todd's physical decline begins to resemble something Indy has already witnessed. From there, the film becomes more than simply a haunted-house story. A much sadder idea emerges: the dog understands that something terrible is happening to his owner but cannot understand what it is or how to stop it.

I found that considerably more powerful than the supernatural presence itself.

The bond between them carries the film. Indy remains alert, tries to wake Todd when something strange happens, follows him, searches for him and waits when he disappears. He does not need language for us to understand what he feels. His loyalty provides the story's real emotional weight.

That gives Good Boy something many horror films lack: tenderness.

The concept also creates limitations. Keeping the canine perspective means the human characters receive less development and the mythology of the house remains deliberately incomplete. Some situations repeat themselves, and given the film's very short running time, the central idea occasionally feels as though it might have worked just as well as an extended short film.

I would not say it is especially terrifying either. There are unsettling apparitions, shadows and genuinely tense moments, but I was far more interested in what would happen to Indy and whether he could protect Todd than in discovering exactly what supernatural force inhabited the house.

Strangely, that works in the film's favour.

When horror threatens a human protagonist, we usually assume they can run, fight or make decisions. Indy can only do what a dog would do: stay close to the person he loves, warn him when danger appears and keep searching even when he no longer understands what is happening.

There is something deeply sad about that.

The ending preserves that mixture of relief and melancholy. Indy survives the experience, but it does not feel like a victory. It simply feels like an animal who has done absolutely everything he could.

Good Boy does not reinvent the haunted-house movie, but it finds a genuinely original perspective from which to tell one. Its scares may be familiar and its story is simple, yet Indy's point of view transforms familiar horror situations into something different.

In the end, what stayed with me most was not the entity or the house.

It was the dog waiting for his owner to come back.