I’ve been excited about checking out Good Boy ever since I first heard about it. A horror movie told entirely from the perspective of a dog? That’s such a wild and clever idea, and I was all in on seeing how that would play out.
The film comes from director Ben Leonberg, and the story follows Indy, a loyal pup who moves with his owner Todd into a creepy old family home. From there, Indy starts seeing things that Todd can’t like phantoms, ghostly warnings, and a dark presence lurking in the house.
It’s a haunted house movie, but filtered through the eyes of a dog, and I thought, “Yeah, that’s a movie I need to see.”
Unfortunately, while the concept is fresh, the execution left me pretty underwhelmed. The movie is short, just a little over an hour, but it somehow dragged on and felt closer to three.
The pacing never found its rhythm, and scenes often lingered way too long without building much tension. What could’ve worked as a tight short film just doesn’t hold up as a feature.
Technically, the film struggled as well as the sound mix was uneven, and sometimes jarringly loud, and the camera work felt amateurish. For a film built around such a unique point of view, it didn’t lean into that angle as effectively as it could have.
That said, I’ve got to give credit where it’s due. Indy, the dog, was hands-down the best part of this movie. He was adorable, expressive, and honestly the strongest actor in the whole cast. The human performances didn’t carry much weight, but Indy had a natural screen presence that kept me invested. Without him, the movie wouldn’t have worked at all.
Look, I want to be fair here, I know how much work goes into making a movie. Getting a film project off the ground, shot, edited, and out into the world in theaters is no small task, and I absolutely applaud the filmmakers for putting in the effort to make Good Boy happen.
That takes real passion and commitment. But at the same time, passion alone doesn’t make a movie work. The concept here was genuinely great, but the execution just didn’t match it. The story and script felt undercooked, and while the idea had all the ingredients for something special, it never came together in a way that really landed.
I know Good Boy has been getting some hype, and I really wanted to be on board with it. But for me, it just didn’t live up to the expectations. The story was thin, the script weak, and the scares never quite landed. The movie came across as more of a novelty that ran out of steam early on.
At its core, Good Boy is a gimmick film, and while that gimmick is actually really cool, it’s not enough to carry the whole experience. Without the dog’s POV, this is just another bland haunted house movie we’ve all seen before, and even with it, the film doesn’t do enough to stand apart. There are some interesting ideas sprinkled throughout, but they never fully pay off.
Walking out of the theater, I couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment. I wanted this movie to be great, I wanted to love it, but instead it left me frustrated.
If you’re curious about the premise, it might be worth checking out at home just for Indy’s performance. But as a full horror experience, Good Boy needed a lot more than a cute dog and a clever hook to justify a trip to the theater.
