Good Boy

Watching Good Boy reminded me a lot of In A Violent Nature. That movie was a bold experiment, looking at a horror movie staple -- the slasher movie -- and taking a whole new angle on it; following the killer. It sought to explore what a killer like Jason Voorhees does in his spare time. As it turned out, the idea was a lot better as a theory than committed to film, because the answer was "he walks a lot". Good Boy takes the same experimental approach of looking at a horror genre -- in this case, the haunted house movie -- from a new angle, being that of a dog. Every element of the movie's story is discovered through the eyes of Indy, the dog of Todd. Todd is dying and has come out to his family's old cabin to live, a cabin everyone in the family insists is haunted. As such, 95% of the movie is just Todd and Indy, and the story unfolds from Indy's level, literally. The camera is often at the dog's level, either looking at him or at the world from his perspective. On a technical level, Good Boy is amazing. With a minimal score, deft cinematography, simple but effective use of light and shadow, and an amazingly expressive canine actor, Good Boy builds one hell of a spooky atmosphere. This is a seriously creepy movie, and it is impressive how it was pulled off. This certainly isn't a big budget extravaganza with whizz-bang CGI, but it doesn't need it. I cannot adequately express how impressive it is how much atmosphere Good Boy without doing a lot to make it. It's impressive. And the movie doesn't use any cheats like giving the dog an inner monologue, or some super-intelligent Lassie-style wonder-dog that can open doors and operate hand-crank wells. It's just a normal dog. What's less impressive, however, is that the atmosphere doesn't lead to much of anything. Good Boy is all about mood. I don't mind that they don't explain the supernatural forces at work. I'm all for ambiguity in a horror movie. But Good Boy fails to actually build to anything. Its climax is more the logical conclusion of events. I wasn't expecting Indy to face off with the entity in some kind of battle to the death, but how it ends left me thinking "... yeah, and?" more than "that was worth the ride". It also doesn't help that, at numerous times along the way, there are logic gaps and plot holes the size of airplanes, and the movie makes no effort to explain them. It really breaks the immersion when you're saying "but how" every 15 minutes. How much you'll like Good Boy wholly dependent on how much you value a movie setting a mood more than telling a story. There is no doubt Good Boy excels at the former, and I'd be lying if I said that isn't a necessary component of any horror movie. But it's just that: a component. It's not the whole thing. Good Boy did one component exceedingly well, at the expense of the other components, and wound up arriving at the same conclusion In A Violent Nature did; maybe a movie hasn't been done before because the idea's structure can't sustain the reality's weight.