Good Boy

Dogs’ eyes are powerful things. You might not want to give dog your cheese. But after one blast of those big, round, shiny orbs of quiet pleading, it’s highly likely dog will soon be munching on a lovely cheesy treat.

Director Ben Leonberg clearly understands the power of dogs’ eyes. He uses them to intense visual and emotional effect in his feature debut, which brings a fresh gimmick to the horror genre: it’s all experienced from the perspective of a hound, played by his own Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, named Indy. In one memorable scene, Leonberg even delivers a superbly creepy jump-scare via a reflected image in an extreme close-up of one of Indy’s eyes. Now that never happened in Scooby-Doo.

If you’re the kind of person who just can’t handle seeing bad things happen to cute animals (in other words, if you’re most people), you might find Good Boy a bit too much to handle. Which isn’t to say that it’s overly harsh, needlessly cruel or horribly exploitative. It’s just that making your protagonist someone who can’t speak (aside from the occasional whimper or shrill bark) and who primarily expresses themselves with those eyes as the supernatural shenanigans ensue hugely heightens the impact.

Indy’s lead performance must rank as one of the greatest animal turns of recent times.

It also, to be honest, lets Leonberg get away with some scare tactics that will be familiar to fans of Ari Aster and Mike Flanagan: shadows gathering in corners, creepy figures lurking in otherwise mundane tableaux, long moments of stillness that terminate in sudden, heart-spiking movement. Extending the dog’s-eye view to a sharing of its subconscious experience also muddies the narrative in places, causing certain sequences to dissolve into confusion. Was Indy just dreaming that, or did it really happen?

Although, arguably this is the point: there’s an intriguing question mark over whether what we’re seeing is indeed the manifestation of a demonic curse, or simply how a dog, with its heightened senses, responds to the life-threatening illness of its owner.

And what a dog. Teased out over a three-year period, Indy’s lead (sorry) performance must rank as one of the greatest animal turns of recent times. It certainly throws that CGI-concocted Krypto into the shade. For his work here, Leonberg’s waggy-tailed pal surely deserves all the cheese.