[7]
Good Boy is a novelty horror film starring a dog and told entirely from the dog’s perspective. The dog’s name, in the film and in real life, is Indy. He’s a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who accompanies his human, Todd (Shane Jensen, whose face is never shown), in and out of doctor visits and hospital stays as he receives a fatal prognosis. Todd brings Indy with him to an old house in the woods where his grandfather lived with a dog named Bandit. As soon as they arrive, Indy knows something is not right — a dark figure keeps appearing in the shadows of every room. Indy has nightmares and visions of Bandit, who seems to have encountered the same dark spirit before he mysteriously disappeared. As Todd’s health wanes, Indy is vigilant and tries to protect him from the sinister, supernatural forces that surround them.
Director and co-writer Ben Leonberg makes his feature debut with Good Boy, a terrific concept for a movie — though perhaps not one strong enough to sustain a feature runtime. Even at a scant 72 minutes, the film seems to repeat itself with more than few scenes where Indy stares into shadows and feels uneasy. The Bandit subplot pays off poignantly, though, and the climax of the film is a heartfelt and satisfying one that indicates strongly — if not definitively — what the monster of the film really is. If you’re one of the world’s many dog lovers (and if you’re not, why not?), you might fall in love with Indy and his plight even if the film has some pacing problems here and there.