The idea of a horror movie told from the perspective of a dog is a good one.  It’s a great one, actually. It seems so simple you wonder why it hasn’t ever been done before. The execution of Good Boy is mostly good too. Except for a few shots, it isn’t from the dog’s POV or anything, but the camera is often set down low, from the height a dog would normally see. The dog’s owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), barely has his face on screen. If you’ve ever had a dog suddenly look out a window into darkness or bark at a door when no one was outside, then you know the feeling this movie gives you.

There isn’t a whole lot of plot to describe. Todd has some kind of disease. The kind that makes him cough up blood regularly. The film opens on him unconscious, lying on his couch with the dog Indy (a very good dog, indeed) sitting by his feet. Todd’s sister Vera (Arielle Friedman) discovers him there and calls for an ambulance. 

Upon release, he moves to his dead grandfather’s old home in the woods. Vera constantly calls Todd with concerns over his health, to his increased annoyance. The house is old and creepy and possibly haunted. Indy regularly feels a dark presence there. Sometimes he sees something lurking in the shadows. Sometimes it does more than lurk. This is the type of film that will linger in a wide shot inside the house. After a long beat, something will move, or a shadow will become a creature. I found myself always looking in the backgrounds to find some new horror.

It is a mood film with jump scares.

I dug all of that. But the script has problems. Nothing is very well defined. My expectations were that Todd would be attacked in some way by the monster and Indy would triumphantly save him. I would have even accepted Todd dying early in the film and the rest of it being Indy trying to survive the monster like a Final Girl.

But Todd hardly even notices the evil presence. It might be attacking him. It might be making him sicker.  Or it might be possessing him somehow. But none of that is clear. At one point I thought the monster might just be a metaphor for his illness.

Indy is more of a passive observer than a hero. It would have been incredibly obnoxious to have him barking at everything the entire movie, but he just sits there watching weird shadows appear and nightmare monsters attack without hardly even growling. 

All of this makes the film fairly inert. There isn’t much forward motion to it. The plot never seems to go anywhere, but the themes—what the film is trying to say—are more muddled than clear.

I’m glad I watched it. I really do think the concept is a good one, and the execution is well done. I just wish there was more to it.