Good Boy is a 2025 haunted house film told almost entirely through the eyes of a dog, and it mostly works. Director Ben Leonberg cast his own Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Indy, as the lead, then built a small, sad ghost story around what a loyal pet notices that its sick owner refuses to see. If you searched goodboy wanting to know whether the hype is real, here is the honest answer: it’s a clever, tender, modestly scary indie that earns its short runtime but doesn’t quite fill it.
The Quick Verdict
Good Boy is a gimmick film that keeps finding new reasons for the gimmick to exist. The “dog’s point of view” premise could have been a five-minute festival short. Leonberg turns it into a feature about illness, inheritance and the specific helplessness of loving someone you can’t protect.
You’ll get the most out of it if you live with a dog and have ever watched one stare at an empty corner. Expect a slow-burn mood piece. You won’t get a monster movie, a body count or the kind of relentless dread you’d find in the most terrifying films of the past decade.
The film’s weak spot is its people. Indy is magnetic, and the camera loves him. The humans are kept at the edge of the frame by design, which means the emotional story lands as an idea more than an experience.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5. A great dog, a smart concept and a handful of genuinely eerie images, slightly let down by a thin middle stretch.
Movie Info: Cast, Crew and Key Facts
| Detail | Good Boy |
|---|---|
| Year | 2025 |
| Director | Ben Leonberg (feature debut) |
| Writers | Ben Leonberg, Alex Cannon |
| Lead | Indy (as himself) |
| Human cast | Shane Jensen (Todd), Arielle Friedman (Vera), Larry Fessenden (Grandpa) |
| Subgenre | Supernatural haunted house, slow burn |
| Runtime | About 73 minutes |
| Premiere | SXSW 2025, Midnighters section |
| Festival honor | SXSW Midnighters Audience Award |
| Distributor | IFC Films (theatrical), Shudder (streaming) |
| US theatrical release | October 3, 2025 |
The credit that matters most is the first one. Indy is the star in a literal sense: he’s on screen for nearly every shot, and the story only shows you what he can see, hear or smell. The human actors are supporting players, and the film often frames them from the waist down or from behind, the way a dog would actually experience them.
Larry Fessenden’s casting is a nice nod for indie horror fans. He has spent decades directing and producing low-budget genre work, including Habit (1995) and Wendigo (2001), and his presence signals that Good Boy comes from the same scrappy, handmade corner of horror.
What Good Boy Is About (No Spoilers)
Todd is unwell, and he’s in denial about it. He leaves the city and moves with Indy into the isolated rural house that belonged to his late grandfather. His sister Vera keeps calling, worried, pushing him to take his health seriously. Todd keeps waving her off.
Indy, meanwhile, notices things. Sounds in the walls. A presence in the dark doorways. A family history in the house that seems to repeat. He can’t tell Todd what’s wrong, and Todd wouldn’t listen anyway, so Indy does what dogs do: he watches, he waits, he barks at nothing, and he stays close.
That’s the whole setup, and the film is smart enough not to overcomplicate it. The tension comes from a simple gap. You and Indy can sense the danger. Todd can’t, or won’t.
Underneath the ghost story, the premise is about something most pet owners know. Dogs read us constantly. They notice when we’re sick, sad or scared before we admit it ourselves. Good Boy takes that ordinary intuition and turns it into the engine of a haunting.
Behind the Camera: How You Direct a Dog to Star in a Horror Film
This is where Good Boy becomes more interesting than most indie horror, and it’s the part of the story the film’s marketing leaned on hardest.
Leonberg and his wife, producer Kari Fischer, own Indy. Rather than hire a trained animal performer and a large crew, Leonberg shot the film largely at his own home over a period of roughly three years, working in short sessions around what Indy was willing to do on a given day. Interviews around the SXSW premiere put the number of shooting days at around 400, which is an absurd figure for a 73-minute film and tells you how patient the process had to be.
A few things stand out about the approach:
- Indy wasn’t “acting” in the human sense. Leonberg built scenes around natural dog behavior: curiosity, alertness, the head tilt, the low growl. Treats, toys and familiar commands did the rest. The performance comes from editing and framing as much as from the dog.
- The camera lives at Indy’s eye level. Most of the film sits low to the floor. Furniture looms, doorways feel enormous, and human heads drift out of frame. That one choice makes a normal farmhouse feel hostile.
- Faces are rationed. Because adults are often cropped or shown from behind, you rarely get a clean read on Todd’s emotions. You learn about his condition the way Indy would: through sounds, smells, routines that change and things that stop happening.
- It’s a home movie in the best way. The small scale shows. Locations are limited, the cast is tiny and the effects are restrained. That works in the film’s favor most of the time, because the restraint feels deliberate rather than cheap.
If you’ve seen Skinamarink (2022), you’ll recognize a similar strategy: horror filtered through a viewer who can’t fully understand what’s happening. Good Boy is far more conventional and watchable than that film, but the logic is related.
What Works
The Dog-Height Camera Actually Changes the Scares
Plenty of horror films use an unusual point of view as decoration. Good Boy uses it to control information, which is what good horror camerawork should do.
Because you’re tethered to Indy, you can’t walk over and check the dark room. You can’t open the closet. You hear Todd in another part of the house and you can only see what’s within a few feet of the floor. The result is a constant low hum of vulnerability. The house is too big, and you’re too small to do anything about it.
The best images in the film come from this restriction. A shape at the far end of a hallway. A figure framed in a doorway that Indy refuses to approach. Moments where the dog’s posture tells you more than any music cue could.
Indy Is a Genuinely Great Screen Presence
There’s no point being coy: you’re here for the dog, and the dog delivers. Indy has a wonderfully expressive face, with alert eyes and a habit of going very still before reacting. The editors cut his natural behavior into something that reads as fear, confusion, devotion and stubborn loyalty.
You never forget that he’s a real animal, and that’s part of the power. When Indy whimpers outside a closed door, it hits differently than a human actor doing the same beat, because you know he isn’t performing grief in the way a person would.
Sound Carries Half the Film
Dogs live through their ears and noses, and the sound design leans into that. Creaks, scratches, distant voices on old recordings, a cough from another room. Much of the dread arrives through what Indy hears rather than what he sees.
Watch it with decent headphones or a proper speaker setup if you can. On a laptop speaker you’ll lose a good chunk of what makes the quiet scenes work.
It Knows Exactly How Long to Be
At around 73 minutes, Good Boy is shorter than most episodes of prestige TV. Leonberg doesn’t stretch the premise into a 100-minute slog with a mythology dump in the third act. The film arrives, sets its mood, makes its point and leaves.
What Doesn’t Work
The Humans Are Thin by Design, and It Costs Something
Keeping Todd and Vera at arm’s length is the right formal choice. It also means the central relationship between dog and owner rests on a person you barely know. Shane Jensen does solid work with limited screen time and often without his face in frame, but Todd stays more symbol than character.
That matters because the film’s emotional payoff depends on you caring about Todd as much as Indy does. Some viewers will get there through sheer dog empathy. Others will feel the gap.
The Middle Third Loops
Even at a short runtime, there’s a stretch in the middle where the pattern becomes predictable: Indy senses something, investigates, gets spooked, retreats. The variations are good, but the rhythm repeats.
A film with a human lead could break that pattern with dialogue, research scenes or a new character. Good Boy can’t, because its lead doesn’t speak and can’t Google the house’s history. It’s an honest limitation of the concept rather than a lazy choice.
The Horror Is Mild
If you’re coming off something like Hereditary (2018) or Talk to Me (2022), Good Boy will feel gentle. There are a few sharp jolts and a couple of unsettling images, but the film is more melancholy than terrifying. That’s a fair artistic choice. Just set your expectations accordingly.
How Scary Is Good Boy? Who It Suits
Here’s a plain breakdown, because the trailer and the dog-in-peril premise make it hard to judge the tone from outside.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Overall scare level | 2 out of 5 |
| Gore | Very light, nothing graphic |
| Jump scares | A handful, mostly sound-driven |
| Sustained dread | Moderate, comes in waves |
| Emotional heaviness | High for pet owners |
| Good first “proper” horror film? | Yes, for teens and up |
Watch it if you love slow-burn supernatural horror movies, you’re a dog person, you appreciate low-budget filmmaking with a strong concept, or you want something unsettling that won’t keep you up all night.
Skip it or brace yourself if you find stories about illness and losing someone hard to sit through, or you need a fast pace and big set pieces. The sadness hits harder than the scares.
Is it OK if animal harm upsets you? This is the question half of you came here for. The film puts Indy in frightening situations and you’ll worry about him throughout. There’s more detail on what happens in the spoiler section and the FAQ below, so you can decide how much you want to know.
It also slots nicely into a Halloween night horror lineup as the gentler opener before something heavier, especially if you’re watching with people who don’t usually do horror.
Good Boy Reviews: What Critics and Audiences Said
The festival reception set the tone. Good Boy premiered at SXSW in March 2025 in the Midnighters section, a program built for genre crowd-pleasers, and took home the section’s Audience Award. IFC Films and Shudder, sister companies under AMC Networks, picked it up for release, and IFC put it in theaters on October 3, 2025, right at the start of spooky season.
Critics were broadly warm. The praise clustered around three points:
- The concept is executed rather than just pitched. Reviewers kept noting that the dog’s-eye view shapes every scene instead of wearing off after the first act.
- Indy is a legitimate screen lead. The dog became the main talking point of the release, with plenty of half-joking calls for awards attention.
- The film is about grief and illness under the hood. Many reviews read it as a story about watching a loved one decline, told from the one family member who can’t understand the medical details.
The criticisms were also consistent. Several reviewers found the story slight, the human characters underwritten and the scares tame. A common line was that it felt like a great short film carefully expanded to feature length.
Audience reviews split in a predictable way. Dog owners tended to rate it higher and talk about crying more than screaming. Viewers who came for straight horror were more likely to call it slow or underwhelming. If you check aggregate scores, expect the critic number to sit above the audience one, which is common for quiet, art-leaning horror.
My take sits close to the critical consensus. It won’t make anyone’s list of the greatest horror films, but as a debut made on a tiny scale with a non-human lead, it’s a real achievement.
Where to Watch Good Boy
Good Boy opened in US theaters through IFC Films on October 3, 2025. Shudder is the film’s announced streaming home, so that’s the first place to check once its theatrical and rental window wraps up. Shudder titles also tend to be available through AMC+, which bundles the Shudder library.
Between theaters and streaming, the film is the kind of release that typically lands on the major digital rental and purchase storefronts. Availability shifts by country and by month, so check your preferred service directly before you plan a movie night around it.
One practical tip: because so much of the film lives in its sound mix, it’s worth seeing on a decent setup rather than a phone screen.
The Ending of Good Boy Explained
Spoiler warning
This section spoils the film’s central twist, the fates of Todd and Indy, and how the ending reads.
The short answer: the haunting and Todd’s illness are two faces of the same thing. The presence in the house isn’t a random ghost that Todd happens to stumble into. In the film’s logic, it’s tied to the family line and to death itself, which is why it gathers strength as Todd gets sicker and keeps refusing help.
The clues are laid in early. The house belonged to Todd’s grandfather, who also lived there in decline. Old recordings and traces of the grandfather’s life, including his own dog, suggest a pattern that’s happened before in these rooms. Indy is essentially re-living what another loyal animal went through decades earlier.
Indy senses the entity because dogs sense illness. Todd doesn’t see it because he’s refusing to look at what’s happening to his own body. Vera, calling from outside, represents the healthy world trying and failing to pull him out. Every time Todd dismisses her or ignores a symptom, the darkness in the house closes in.
Todd doesn’t survive. The film’s final movement is about Indy trying to fight off something that can’t be fought, then holding on through the loss. Indy lives. That’s the emotional core of the ending: the dog’s loyalty can’t save his owner, but it isn’t wasted either. He stays with Todd until the end, which is exactly what so many real dogs do.
Read that way, Good Boy belongs to the same family as The Babadook (2014) and Relic (2020), films where the monster is a pain the characters don’t want to name. It’s less of a puzzle box than either, and Leonberg leaves the entity’s literal rules deliberately loose. The film cares far more about the feeling than the mythology.
Some viewers wanted a clearer explanation of what the entity “is” and where it came from. I think the vagueness is the right call. Indy doesn’t understand cancer, inheritance or death, so the film doesn’t explain them either. You get the dog’s version: something bad is here, it wants him, and I’m not leaving.
My Rating, Broken Down
| Category | Score (out of 5) |
|---|---|
| Concept | 5 |
| Indy’s performance | 5 |
| Atmosphere and sound | 4 |
| Scares | 2.5 |
| Human characters and story | 2.5 |
| Rewatch value | 3 |
| Overall | 3.5 |
The overall score isn’t a simple average. The concept and the lead are strong enough to carry the film past its weaker writing, and the short runtime means the soft spots never sink it.
What to Watch After Good Boy
If Good Boy left you wanting more horror that uses a haunting to talk about illness, grief or family history, these three are the natural next stops. All are spoiler-free picks.
Relic (2020)
Natalie Erika James’s debut follows a mother and daughter who return to the family home after the grandmother goes missing, then reappears changed. It’s a haunted house story about dementia, and it shares Good Boy’s idea that a house can hold a family’s decline. Relic is darker and more claustrophobic, with a final act that stays with you for days.
It suits you if Good Boy’s emotional core hit hardest and you’re ready for something heavier and scarier.
The Babadook (2014)
Jennifer Kent’s Australian classic is the modern template for “the monster is grief.” A widowed mother and her troubled son are menaced by a creature from a pop-up book, and the line between supernatural threat and mental breakdown keeps blurring. It works as both a psychological thriller and a creature feature, and it’s sharper and more intense than Good Boy.
Pick it if you liked Good Boy’s metaphor and want a film that pushes harder on both the scares and the family drama.
Skinamarink (2022)
Kyle Edward Ball’s micro-budget experiment shows a night in a house through the confused, low-to-the-floor perspective of two small children whose parents have vanished. It’s grainy, abstract and divisive, with almost no conventional plot. If Good Boy’s restricted point of view was your favorite part, this is that idea pushed to the extreme.
It suits patient viewers who enjoy experimental horror and don’t need a clear story. If Good Boy’s middle stretch felt slow to you, skip this one.
If you liked this
Lake Mungo (2008): a quiet faux-documentary about a family haunted by grief, for fans of Good Boy’s sadness.
Paranormal Activity (2007): a found-footage home haunting where restricted viewpoints do the heavy lifting.
The Others (2001): a classic, almost gore-free haunted house story with a strong emotional twist.
Looking for the Other “Goodboy”?
If you typed goodboy into a search bar and landed here by accident, you may have been after Good Boy Vodka, the canned cocktail brand that shares the name. We’re a horror archive, so we can’t help you find a six-pack. There are also other, older films called Good Boy, including a 2003 family comedy about a dog from outer space. This review covers the 2025 horror film from Ben Leonberg, the one with Indy, the haunted farmhouse and the SXSW award.
FAQ
Does the dog die in Good Boy?
No. Indy survives the film. He’s put in frightening situations throughout, and the story is emotionally rough for pet owners, but the dog makes it to the end credits. The human loss is what hits hardest.
Is Good Boy based on a true story?
No. The story is fictional. The real-life element is the lead: Indy is the director’s own dog, and much of the film was shot at Leonberg’s home over roughly three years, which gives it a lived-in, homemade feel.
Who directed Good Boy, and who stars in it?
Ben Leonberg directed it as his feature debut and co-wrote it with Alex Cannon. Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, stars as himself, with Shane Jensen as Todd, Arielle Friedman as Vera and Larry Fessenden as Todd’s grandfather.
How long is Good Boy?
About 73 minutes, which makes it one of the shorter wide-release horror films of 2025. It’s an easy weeknight watch.
Is Good Boy scary?
Mildly. We rate it 2 out of 5 for scares. Expect atmosphere, a few sound-based jolts and some eerie images, but very little gore. The emotional weight is heavier than the horror.
Is Good Boy OK for teenagers?
For most teens, yes. There’s no graphic violence or gore. The themes of terminal illness and loss are the bigger consideration, especially for kids who’ve recently lost a relative or a pet.
Where can I stream Good Boy?
Shudder is the film’s announced streaming home after its October 2025 theatrical run through IFC Films, and Shudder content is also available through AMC+. Digital rental availability varies by country, so check your usual service before planning a watch.