At SXSW, where “Good Boy” premiered earlier this year, festival organizers came up with a special prize for Indy, the protective dog — a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever with chestnut brown fur and shiny, ultra-expressive eyes — on constant lookout for invisible threats. Not unlike the Palme Dog awarded each year at Cannes, SXSW’s one-off “Howl of Fame” honor went to the unconventional film’s four-legged star, who carries a high-concept haunted house story told almost entirely from the dog’s point of view — which is to say, at knee height, cutting between Indy’s adorable face and the ghostly apparitions only he can see.
Like a high-pitched whistle that’s detectable to dogs but not their masters, these freaky visions elude Todd (Shane Jensen) even as they clearly upset his intuitive companion. Indy is actually writer-director Ben Leonberg’s dog, and though the poor animal spends most of the film looking distressed, Leonberg wasn’t about to traumatize his beloved pet. To suggest the opposite — the easily perturbed canine equivalent of a “fraidy-cat,” if you will — “Good Boy” uses all kinds of clever tricks, from inventive editing to “The Babadook”-style gags where terrifying silhouettes move in the background.
Executed with limited resources but maximum ingenuity, the film opens with a home-movie montage of Todd raising this handsome retriever since he was a puppy. Indy would do anything for his human, who’s dealing with issues neither Indy nor we can entirely understand. Turns out, Todd has inherited the same condition that killed his grandfather (played by low-budget horror legend Larry Fessenden). Rather than suffer in the city, he takes Indy out to the abandoned home he inherited from the old man.
Todd may be looking for some peace and quiet, but that’s hardly the vibe Indy gets when they arrive on a rainy night. He hears what sounds like another dog whining as he passes the storm cellar and stands warily at the top of the basement stairs when Todd goes down to check the fuses. Acting as his own DP, Leonberg embraces the dark, using lamps and secondary light sources such that ominous shapes appear to lurk in deep shadows, misleading our eyes and imaginations: Was that a figure in the corner, or just the way the lamp hit it?
These phantom menaces don’t seem to bother Todd at all, though Indy is understandably upset by them. Few films have succeeded in getting such a nuanced animal performance, but that doesn’t mean we can read exactly what’s going through this dog’s head any more than we can discern what our own pets are thinking. Such ambiguity works to the film’s advantage, as Leonberg focuses on Indy’s face and lets audiences project our own feelings onto the cocked head, the questioning expression, his brows arched in either curiosity or concern.
“Good Boy” was reportedly made over 400 days (an unthinkably long shoot, but necessary to pull off that all-important central performance), with Leonberg hiding the human actors’ faces in order to keep us concentrated on Indy’s experience. When Todd is first introduced, he looks quite frightening, hunched in the background, wheezing unnaturally. The dog recognizes that something is amiss, but isn’t capable of understanding what’s really bothering Todd.
Whether patrolling the new environment or simply accompanying his master, Indy comes across as emotionally intuitive. He is also uniquely attuned to the supernatural. A dark presence permeates the house, its malevolent energy seeping into the film’s soundtrack, which works overtime to unsettle us. Indy picks up on phenomena that people can’t see, including a slender mud-covered man who seems to be stalking Todd and a separate wraith-like shape that ultimately turns out to be local hunter, clad in head-to-toe camouflage.
Many of the film’s images don’t make sense, but that doesn’t make them any less effective at scaring both Indy and the audience — even if there’s an equal risk of frustrating us at times. We stick with it because Indy proves so fiercely loyal, as the dog who watched over Todd’s grandfather was before him, and that gives Leonberg’s feature debut its emotional center. “Good Boy” reflects the powerful connection between people and their pets as few films have, ultimately devastating us with the devotion these soulmates are capable of showing.
variety.com
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