Review of “Good Boy”, a film by Ben Leonberg with (the dog) Indy

A horror story told entirely from the perspective of a dog is a narrative challenge that Leonberg overcomes with many more discoveries than shortcomings in a film that owes almost everything to Indy, winner of the Howl of Fame award for best dog performance at the SXSW in Austin, Texas. Direct to the “Canes” Festival.

Premiere 10/23/2025

Published on 10/19/2025

Good Boy (United States/2025). Screenplay, photography, editing and direction: Ben Leonberg. Cast: Indy, Shane Jensen, Larry Fessenden and Arielle Friedman. Music: Sam Boase-Miller. Distributor: BF Paris. Duration: 72 minutes.

For those of us who have a dog (in my case, a Golden Retriever for 10 years named Nala), the idea that she could be the protagonist of a film due to her expressiveness, agility and intelligence is something that is usually part of our fantasies. For his debut feature (although with a dozen previous shorts), Ben Leonberg made that dream a reality, as he filmed a horror feature film around Indy, his Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever dog (popularly known as Toller). And it is not an occasional, superfluous, decorative presence: Indy is the movie.

Presented at very avid genre film festivals such as SXSW, Fantasy, Sitges and Beyond, Good Boy Its “human” protagonist is Todd (Shane Jensen), a man who has just gone through a family tragedy and suffers various psychological and medical traumas that Leonberg never fully explains. The truth is that he and Indy move to Todd’s grandfather’s farm (the legendary Larry Fessenden will appear in old home videos), who has also had an abrupt and inexplicable end to his life.

Except for some calls from his sister Vera (Arielle Friedman), concerned about his health, Todd and his dog will be alone inside a large house, while an omnipresent storm leaves them without power. Everything served, then, for an accumulation of ominous and sinister climates with supernatural presences that Indy will begin to perceive with greater frequency and intensity, while he tries to accompany and protect his increasingly degraded owner.

Leonberg – who not only wrote and directed the film, but also did photography and editing – said that filming spanned 400 days because what he needed was to record Indy’s instinctive reactions to various stimuli, but without manipulating or traumatizing him. Only someone who has always known and lived with a dog can achieve such a level of intimacy and connection.

But Good Boy It is not just another feat of the “film starring animals” subgenre in times when pets on all types of screens are popular (the success of videos about pets on social networks is a viral phenomenon), but above all a good exercise in psychological horror with ghostly elements. It’s true that there are some commonplaces and quirks within haunted house stories, but there are many fascinating and disturbing moments that make the experience much more than watching a charming dog suffer on screen. In that sense, there is much more than perseverance and patience in Leonberg as project manager: we are dealing with a director who knows how to generate and transmit the essential keys of horror cinema.