the movie that took three years to shoot and that, if you have a dog, will destroy you (for the better)

I don’t know at what exact moment I became a person who can’t see a dog on the street without smiling at it as if it were a baby. It was long before adopting mine that I discovered that there is no better therapy than petting his back after a bad day. That’s why, when I found out that ‘Good Boy’ was coming out this year, a horror movie told from a dog’s point of viewI knew that I would be one of the first to go to the cinema to suffer with him, want to hug him and, if necessary, scream at the screen to run away from that haunted house.

After passing through the Sitges and SXSW festivals, ‘Good Boy’ has already reached the Spanish billboard. Directed by Ben Leonberg, it is a film shot over three years with his dog Indy as the protagonista retriever from Nova Scotia who, notice, acts better than many humans. After the praise that Messi, the dog from ‘Anatomy of a Fall’, received and the success of ‘Caramelo’ on Netflix, Hollywood seems to have remembered something long forgotten: dogs already come from the factory with charisma, emotional truth and an inhuman capacity to awaken empathy in the viewer.

In this almost experimental film, the camera follows Indy at ground level, always from his gaze. In this way, the scenario that we understand as a haunted house, for him it is simply a territory in which to protect its owner. What for a human protagonist would be fear of an invisible demonic entity, for Indy is something that threatens its owner, regardless of its origin. Through barking, silence and glances, the four-legged protagonist transmits everything without the need for words.

In large part, this is possible thanks to his neutral gaze, combined with the montage, which makes us believe that Indy feels fear, tenderness, sadness or suspicion. Although the dog does not “act”, it simply exists. However, as so often happens in real life, we humans project onto dogs everything we lack: patience, kindness and that ability to look without judging. The live performance is used to the extreme here, turning Indy into a mirror and hero of the scream at the same time.

A new dog classic

I have been arguing for years that dogs deserve their own cinematic resurgence, and ‘Good Boy’ is just proof that cinema with dogs can still experience a second golden age. After classics like ‘Lassie’, ‘Beethoven’ or ‘Marley & Me’, it seemed that we only had viral TikTok videos and feed advertisements left. But between ‘Dog. A Wild Ride’ (with Channing Tatum), ‘Arthur’ (with Mark Wahlberg) and now ‘Good Boy’, something is changing in that the animals are no longer just a cute decoration within the plot, but the moral and narrative heart of the story.

Behind the horror story, ‘Good Boy’ actually talks about something much more general: loyalty. Todd (the human, who barely appears on camera) is sick and lives in isolation. Indy doesn’t quite understand it, He only knows that something is wrong and that he has to protect it. You don’t need to understand what evil is to confront it. If that’s not pure love, I don’t know what is. And that is why the film works with hardly any plot and is so atypical: because it appeals to a universal feeling such as that of loving without conditions.

I’m not going to say that it’s a film perfect. Above all, it will not please those who do not love dogs or tolerate slow paced movies. However, it is worth seeing just for being one of the most original cinematographic experiments that have been released in recent years.

Photos | good boy

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