You ever get the feeling that your pet can sense something you don’t? Maybe it’s the way they hard stare at an empty corner. Maybe it’s that abrupt bark in the middle of the night, or the skittering paws propelling them out of a room at a moment’s notice. Whatever the quirk, it leaves you feeling shaken and wishing they could just talk and spill the spooky tea. Good Boy drops audiences into this scary terrain, centering its haunted house story on a dedicated dog who is desperately trying to warn his human bestie about the supernatural threats closing in.
Focusing on a dog in danger is a bold move. There’s a general unspoken rule in Hollywood that though you can kill scads of humans in movies, you’ll outrage your audience if you kill the dog. Our empathy might not extend to every slasher victim or a nameless gang of gun-toting minions, but our hearts immediately go out to a dog in danger. There’s a whole website dedicated to warning tenderhearted dog lovers if a canine will die in a movie. Hell, the wildly popular action series John Wick is predicated on this very idea, knowing we will watch a man kill hordes to avenge his beloved puppy.
Good Boy‘s independent director/co-writer/cinematographer/producer Ben Leonberg realizes this, and puts his viewers through the wringer by casting his sweet family pet, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Indy, to be tormented by ghosts and vicious visions of doom and death. The resulting horror movie had me yelping like I was a kid seeing her first scary movie. Props to you, Ben and Indy.
With one clever gimmick, Good Boy brings fresh life to horror cliches.
Indy, the dog star, behind the scenes of “Good Boy.”
Credit: What’s Wrong with Your Dog? LLC
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