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Good Boy stands as a horror movie in a class of its own. We’ve seen haunted house movies, but rather than centering on screaming teens or fearless ghost investigators, it’s told from the perspective of a dog. (A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, to be precise.) In Good Boy, Indy the pup has to safeguard his owner as otherworldly powers close in on their remote cabin.

Initially planned for a limited release, this brisk, 90-minute thriller received a broad release after its trailer went viral, with people flocking to search engines to find out if Indy survives. We won't spoil the ending here, but if you're curious where the idea for Good Boy came from in the first place, the details are provided.

The Conceptual Origin Behind the Film

First-time director Ben Leonberg, who’s also the real-life owner of Indy, says he wanted to create this movie to tap into the fears that every dog owner shares.

“I think it stems from a thought or maybe worry every dog owner has had, which is, ‘Why is my dog barking at nothing or staring at nothing?’” Leonberg states. “There's probably a perfectly valid reason for that, but the human imagination inevitably considers the worst, think ghosts. I wanted to exploit that anxiety. Then, in the screenwriting and filming process, it was working out how to tell a story that really embraces that perspective, where we're limited to everything the dog can even understand as a way to have this narrative unfold.”

Good Boy is experimental in the best way, engaging spectators immediately with a protagonist you can't help but care for and root for, does well with exposition, and makes use of offhand dialogue from other characters, especially since our protagonist can’t talk.

Crafting the Canine Perspective

Leonberg maintains that his dog isn’t giving a performance, but rather it’s the artistry of the film that gives life to each scene. Indy is one of the most innocent protagonists in film history, and this fact is fully appreciated by its director.

“I think Indy, probably all dogs, all animals, are something of a shortcut for pulling on an audience's heartstrings because they are innocent,” Leonberg observes. “They don't know they're in the movie. And there's a really interesting lesson just about performance, that he's not performing. I can't say that enough, he does not know he was in a movie, but through filmmaking, the sound design, the music, the shots, the lighting, you can kind of convey an emotion and a feeling on his — what are otherwise neutral expressions — and the audience will project a performance onto him. I think that genuinely is how most of the movie works: the filmmaking is telling the audience how to feel, and then they're putting that emotion on. He's listening to us just make silly noises on set. And the audience says, Wow, I'm scared. So the dog must be scared. He's not. He's just trying to figure out what his mom and dad are doing.”

Even down to the breed of dog, everything was meticulously thought out to fuel audience reactions.

“I think we relate to a dog like Indy,” Leonberg comments, gesturing to the pet sitting behind him. “He's not very big, he's only 19 inches high. The camera operates 19 inches off the ground, which was challenging in filmmaking. But I don't know if you would want a big Cujo St Bernard; that would be such a daunting adversary for the supernatural.”

Indy is a bit small when it comes to beasts that might fight the supernatural.

“How could he possibly succeed? That's really good for a story,” Leonberg says. “Also stinking cute.”

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Good Boy is in theaters now.