There’s an old joke in Hollywood: never work with animals because they’re impossible to direct. Yet 2025’s most affecting onscreen performance belongs to Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. Yes, a dog. Indy stars in Good Boy (directed by his actual owner, Ben Leonberg), a horror film told from the point of view of the animal himself.
This isn’t the first time we’ve watched horror through a dog’s eyes—Courage the Cowardly Dog did it decades ago in animated form—but Good Boy pushes the idea further. Here, the innovation is not just that the dog witnesses the uncanny, but that he engages with it. Horror plays out through his senses: the twitch of a nose in a dark hallway, the pause at an empty corner, the tension of loyalty tested by unseen terrors. We are reminded how often our own pets seem to stare at empty spaces, as if perceiving what we cannot.
The film succeeds because it refuses to reduce Indy to “just a pet.” Instead, he becomes an active agent piecing together the hauntings. While his human remains mostly oblivious, Indy shoulders the task of vigilance and protection—an instinctual kind of love. The camera lingers in his perspective, pulling us into a slow, flickering rhythm of dread, where menace is built through pauses and presence rather than gore and jump scares.
When the trailer first dropped, audiences wondered with genuine anxiety: would the dog survive? Online, dog parents half-joked—and half-threatened—that any harm to Indy would cause riots in theaters. It’s a telling moment of cultural resonance. Pets are now considered children, family members, and even surrogate selves. The fate of Indy became a matter of emotional investment far beyond the film itself.
What elevates Good Boy is not just craft but empathy. Among the most touching scenes comes when Indy is shoved aside by his human. The lens holds on his face, registering both hurt and confusion—an emotional beat as moving as any human performance. By the film’s end, Indy has become more than man’s best friend; he is a companion through terror, his loyalty shining even when the world splits between dream, reality, and nightmare.
And perhaps that is the quiet genius of Good Boy. Dogs, like us, feel deeply—but unlike us, they do not cling to resentment. Horror here is not only in ghosts but also in the reminder that, while humans often dwell on betrayal, dogs continue to give love unstained. That, in its way, may be the scariest truth of all.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
