Divalicious Review! ‘Good Boy’ Is Very Good, Yes, Aren’t You?
By Caroline Cao | October 2, 2025 | Celebrity & Culture
Ever wonder why your dog stares at nothing? According to filmmaker Ben Leonberg (with co-writer Alex Cannon), it’s because your dog wants to protect its human from the supernatural. Good Boy is ostensibly about a dog who may perceive outside threats, and in this case, ghosts.
It’s not too novel that a movie takes place from the point of view of the canine, often the side character that barks to alert to danger. The movie begins with home video footage of him since he was a pup. Cute, but also necessary to emphasize its tight-knit bond with its two-legged companion.
Good Boy isn’t just a build-up of a spooky spirit — an outside threat more lethal and supernatural than a mere squirrel — but also the heart-wrenching disintegration of Indy’s human, who we first find is coughing over a cancer-coded illness. We sense that the stakes are high due to this vulnerability, but also, Indy’s human is slipping into imperfect behavior toward his beloved canine. At the New York premiere, the audience gasped as Indy was cursed to go away.
So oriented is the perspective to Indy, the dog playing himself, that we see humans from the neck down or listen to them from the margins or outside the camera frame. Sometimes we get over-the-head shots of humans interacting and Indy observing. Good Boy has its run-of-the-mill jump scares up its sleeves, but it lets other possible hidden scares percolate into the atmosphere.
Sometimes a camera gaze on a dog’s eyes is more than enough. Dogs may not have the same expanse of emotions as humans, but they feel quite deeply. We have a Pavlovian reaction to dogs in danger in horror films, but Good Boy isn’t just banking on that. It’s an earnest love letter to the canine’s love for his human, even when he doesn’t fully understand his human’s pain. But he has a nose, and he is going to sniff for trouble.
Indy deserves more than a treat. Perhaps a special Oscar for this dog is in order.
Good Boy will be released theatrically on October 3.
Photo credit: Shudder
