Good Boy
By telling this haunted house thriller from the POV of an adorable dog, writer-director Ben Leonberg has circumvented many of the horror genre's biggest clichés and created a film that's genuinely gripping
It is safe to say that being the family dog doesn't always bode well in horror films. At the very least, you’re likely to be fundamentally imperilled, while many suffer a worse fate so that the human protagonists comprehend the stakes. In Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, the family dog – Indy (played by Indy) – is the protagonist. It’s a novel move that transpires to be far more than just a gimmick in this nerve-jangling haunted house story with one of the all-time great canine performances.
There are two primary reasons that placing the dog at the heart of a film like this turns out to be a smart move. One is perhaps obvious: it’s a speedy shortcut to audience empathy. We don’t need to warm to the central character; Indy is a cute and incredibly loyal dog, so we innately fear for his safety and want him and his human, Todd (Shane Jensen), to be OK. The second is that Indy is unable to really comprehend what is going on; he just knows it’s scary and dangerous. That means the mechanics of the haunting – the who, the why – can be dispensed with. There is also no threat here of rolling our eyes at the stupid idiot making the clichéd mistakes of the genre. Indy doesn’t understand what’s happening but knows he has to protect Todd.
This makes for some impressively unnerving moments, some thrilling sequences and the potential for a genuinely harrowing ending that keeps things gripping until the final shot.
Released 10 Oct by Vertigo; certificate 15