Watch the home, Indy! This text incorporates extreme spoilers for “Good Boy.”
Does the canine die? It is each the identify of an extremely needful web site and one of the crucial widespread fears amongst moviegoers. Not often has the query been extra applicable than with Ben Leonberg’s creepy haunted home film “Good Boy,” which stars a canine and spends its whole runtime weaponizing the potential of the plucky pup dying an terrible horror film loss of life.
Arguably the primary really scary horror film of 2025, “Good Boy” introduces Indy the canine (as himself). Indy has issues that he is ill-equipped to unravel. His grasp Todd (Shane Jensen) is unwell and generally lashes out at him although he is clearly a Good Boy. Todd additionally retains dragging him to creepy areas like an unfamiliar outdated home and an odd cemetery that Indy simply is aware of are bother. Oh, and he retains listening to unusual whining, the shadows appear to be alive, and his goals are instantly extraordinarily bizarre. There’s additionally that.
Being a canine, Indy has no understanding of (not to mention resolution to) these issues. So he does what he can: He protects his grasp and explores the territory regardless of being acutely conscious that one thing unfamiliar shares the home with them. He does his greatest to consolation his human even when Todd pushes him away. He does not know horror tropes, solely canine curiosity and devotion. So, at any time when there is a unusual noise, an ominous pair of eyes, or a mysteriously opening door, he investigates. Which means that for a lot of the film, Indy is voluntarily jogging nose-first into horror eventualities that the viewers has been conditioned to imagine are unsurvivable. This enables “Good Boy” to position its titular character in deep peril time and time once more, and preserve the viewers on the sting of their seats.
The film makes use of Indy’s unawareness of horror tropes to maintain the supernatural risk obscure
Together with utilizing Indy because the protagonist, “Good Boy” makes him the perspective character. Other than the occasional expository cellphone name, line, and black and white TV footage, the viewers solely learns of the home, Todd’s situation, and the supernatural risk what Indy does, which retains all of it extraordinarily obscure. Are Todd’s outlandish actions in the home attributable to his ache and desperation, or is he stealthily possessed by the entity that leads him towards doom? Indy does not have a means of realizing, so neither has the viewer.
At instances, plainly Indy solely survives his encounters with the supernatural as a result of the semi-corporeal entity haunting the home inexplicably chooses to withdraw. In different scenes, the home ghost appears cautious round Indy, who’s typically unafraid to move towards the abyss that stares again. Roughly midway by, when the altercations change into bodily, it legitimately appears that the film might need opted to kill its four-legged protagonist, solely to disclose that the entity merely moved Indy to a special location.
A attainable rationalization for this dynamic is available in one of many movie’s many black-and-white TV clips. It depicts canine as fearless creatures which have guarded humanity towards issues that go bump within the evening because the days of the cavemen. Maybe some mystical property of this historic guardian obligation is interfering with the monster’s shenanigans, prompting it to dodge Indy and search for oblique methods to get to Todd. These roundabout strategies culminate within the entity tricking Indy into committing the last word sin and biting his grasp, which creates a short lived rift between them and earns poor Indy a stint as a chained yard canine. A very low blow, even for a murderous paranormal creature.
A canine does die in Good Boy — simply not the canine you suppose
In fact, even the mid-movie implication that the entity won’t harm Indy seems to be a false flag. The film’s massive twist is that it really has two cute canine … and the earlier four-legged occupant of the home met an terrible finish that the ghost can also be luring Indy towards.
The destiny the home seeks to impose on Todd and Indy is foreshadowed by recordings and supernatural visions of Todd’s grandpa (horror luminary Larry Fessenden) and his golden retriever, Bandit (Max). The outdated man — together with, it seems, most of Todd’s different kin — died an odd and comparatively early loss of life, and Bandit is closely implied to have gone by the same ordeal as Indy. Solely, this doggy could not get out of the climactic terror basement the entity introduced in lockdown. The “Good Boy” climax reveals Bandit’s semi-mummified stays, nonetheless trapped within the cellar after the home took his grasp.
Fortunately, Indy is extra lucky. Whereas Todd suffers a lot the identical destiny as his granddad, his sister (Arielle Friedman) arrives to go looking the home after failing to achieve him and frees Indy from his basement predicament. Simply earlier than Indy very correctly chooses to exit the cellar at her behest, the entity makes an attempt to lure him again with a whistle, confirming that it was gunning for Indy to share Bandit’s destiny all alongside. “Good Boy” has been on /Movie’s listing of fascinating upcoming 2025 horror films for whereas, and whereas it isn’t wholly good by any means, Indy the canine very a lot is — and it is spectacular how a lot mileage his real-life proprietor Leonberg manages to get out of our concern for his security.
