Crew
Director – Ben Leonberg, Screenplay – Alex Cannon & Ben Leonberg, Producers – Kari Fischer & Ben Leonberg, Music – Sam Boase-Miller, Visual Effects – Jan Klier, Production Design – Alison Diviney. Production Company – What’s Wrong With Your Dog, LLC.
Cast
Indy (Himself), Shane Jensen (Todd), Arielle Friedman (Vera), Larry Fessenden (Grandpa), Stuart Rudin (Richard)
Plot
Todd moves to his grandfather’s cabin, along with his dog Indy. Indy immediately sense some supernatural presence in the house. Todd is not well and begins coughing blood. As they settle in, Indy becomes aware of a dark sinister figure of increasingly malevolent purpose that emerges from the cellar.
Good Boy received some very good word of mouth after premiering at the SXSW Festival. It toured several international film festivals and was given a theatrical release before being bought up for screening on Shudder. Good Boy was a debut film for Ben Leonberg who has been making short films since the 2000s and has worked in commercials and news.
On a purely descriptive plot level, Good Boy could be just a standard work about a Haunted House. The unique twist that Ben Leonberg offers is that the entire film is told from the perspective of the dog (Indy, who is Leonberg’s own dog – Indy even gets top-billing!). The idea of some animals such as dogs being able to see that which is beyond ordinary human senses is an old one that goes way back but has never much been used on film – certainly, has never made into the central focus of a film.
In Good Boy, Indy the dog is placed front centre of the film. Literally so to the extent that Shane Jensen’s Todd, who is the only character on screen for almost the entire film, is only seen as a peripheral figure. Jensen only appears in silhouette or shadow, with his face obscured or the camera focusing on the lower half of his body. The one time that Leonberg breaks with this is the scenes at the end where Jensen gets out of bed and realises he has left his own body where at last we get several shots where we clearly see his face. Aside from the videotapes of the grandfather (Larry Fessenden), the only other character on screen is the neighbour (Stuart Rudin) who is covered in some kind of black camouflage gear from head to toe meaning we never see his face either.
Ben Leonberg creates quite a haunted atmosphere. Good Boy is filled with sinister shapes in the shadows and figures flitting through the background. At first, there is no more than a sense of foreboding about the shadows, but this increases until we get appearances from a ghost dog and a very sinister figure covered in mud. Leonberg gets in a number of jump out of your seat moments – especially one where Indy is unexpectedly grabbed by a pair of hands, another where a pair of mud hands come up out of the kennel to grab Indy’s chain. Things get a little confusing as to what is happening towards the end, but the atmosphere is uncommonly effective.
Good Boy should not be confused with either Good Boy! (2003), an excruciating film about talking dogs from outer space made by the Jim Henson Company, and Good Boy (2022), a really twisted Norwegian film about a man with a companion in a furry suit.
Trailer here