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Good Boy represents a horror movie in a class of its own. Audiences have witnessed haunted house movies, but as opposed to highlighting screaming teens or fearless ghost investigators, it’s told from the perspective of a dog. (A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, to be precise.) In Good Boy, Indy the pup is tasked with defending his owner as supernatural forces close in on their remote cabin.

Originally slated for a limited release, this brisk, 90-minute thriller was granted an extensive theatrical run after its trailer went viral, with people flocking to search engines to find out if Indy survives. It's best not to disclose the ending here, but should you be interested where the idea for Good Boy came from in the first place, the origin is explained.

The Inspiration Behind the Film

Rookie director Ben Leonberg, who’s also the real-life owner of Indy, notes he intended to create this movie to explore the fears that every dog owner shares.

“I think it comes from a thought or maybe worry every dog owner has had, which is, ‘Why is my dog barking at nothing or staring at nothing?’” Leonberg states. “There's probably a perfectly valid reason for that, but the human imagination can't help but think the worst, think ghosts. I wanted to exploit that anxiety. Then, in the screenwriting and filming process, it was figuring out how to tell a story that really adheres to that perspective, where we're limited to everything the dog can even understand as a way to have this narrative unfold.”

Good Boy is innovative in the best way, captivating viewers immediately with a protagonist you can't help but care for and root for, excels at exposition, and employs offhand dialogue from other characters, especially since our protagonist can’t talk.

Developing the Dog's Viewpoint

Leonberg insists that his dog isn’t giving a performance, but rather it’s the artistry of the film that gives life to each scene. Indy is one of the most innocent protagonists in film history, and this quality is well recognized by its director.

“I think Indy, probably all dogs, all animals, are something of a shortcut for pulling on an audience's heartstrings because they are innocent,” Leonberg observes. “They don't know they're in the movie. And there's a really interesting lesson just about performance, that he's not performing. I can't say that enough, he does not know he was in a movie, but through filmmaking, the sound design, the music, the shots, the lighting, you can effectively express an emotion and a feeling on his — what are otherwise neutral expressions — and the audience will assign an acting quality onto him. I think that genuinely is how most of the movie works: the filmmaking is telling the audience how to feel, and then they're putting that emotion on. He's listening to us just make silly noises on set. And the audience says, Wow, I'm scared. So the dog must be scared. He's not. He's just trying to figure out what his mom and dad are doing.”

Including even the breed of dog, everything was taken into consideration to fuel audience reactions.

“I think we relate to a dog like Indy,” Leonberg notes, gesturing to the pet sitting behind him. “He's not very big, he's only 19 inches high. The camera resides 19 inches off the ground, which was challenging in filmmaking. But I don't know if you would want a big Cujo St Bernard; that would be such a formidable opponent for the supernatural.”

Indy is a bit small when it comes to beasts that might fight the supernatural.

“How could he possibly succeed? That's really good for a story,” Leonberg remarks. “Also stinking cute.”

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Good Boy is in theaters now.