Good Boy is the film I have been eagerly waiting to watch since I first read about it earlier this year. I am admittedly a massive dog-lover (my own good boy made me a failure as a foster, and his name is Papa) as well as a fan of horror movies, so it feels like it was made for me.
I know that many people are hesitant to watch Good Boy, because they are afraid the dog will be killed or injured, and I am going to spoil it for you and let you know that Indy does not die or get hurt.
While he does go through some emotional trauma onscreen, writer-director Ben Leonberg (with whom Indy lives as part of the family) wisely included a short post-credits scene, wherein he explains how many of the scenes were filmed. He repeatedly lets us know that Indy did not know he was in a movie. He was just being his cute doggy self, and seeing a few of the scary scenes without special effects shows us they weren’t scary at all in real life. When we see Indy onscreen in a severe rainstorm, he was actually in the near vicinity of a sprinkler. This little behind-the-scenes featurette took away a lot of the emotional heaviness we would have otherwise walked out of the theatre carrying.
Throughout the film, Indy has nightmares and is seeing a terrifying dark figure covered in mud, who seems to be stalking his beloved human Todd. He also sees the apparition of another dog, which turns out to be Todd’s grandfather’s dog Bandit, also a good boy. When Todd and Indy encounter a neighbor in the woods, he says he discovered grandpa’s body after he died, and Bandit was never found. At one point, Indy finds one of Bandit’s bandanas under a piece of furniture.
We know from the beginning of Good Boy that Todd is seriously ill, and as the story moves along, he gets sicker, both physically and mentally. He is brusque with Indy a few times, and has a cough that sometimes brings up blood.
In the last horrific 10-15 minutes of the movie, Indy is chained outside in the rain by Todd, and manages to bust out in an attempt to save his person. He barrels through the cellar door, discovering the skeletonized remains of Bandit, and makes it upstairs to Todd’s bedroom. We see Todd once again being affectionate to his dog, and then he sees his own dead body on the bed before he is dragged away by the muddy figure.
Indy desperately follows after Todd as he is pulled into the basement. He is unable to save him, however, and Todd tells him that he is a good dog, but he can’t save him. Oh, my heart! And please, give Indy ALL the awards this year.
Thankfully, Todd’s sister Vera shows up to check on him, and has obviously already discovered her brother’s body when she opens the cellar door and sees the skeleton before spotting Indy.
She calls him to come outside, and he hesitates. While he doesn’t want to leave Todd, he does go up the steps to safety, and we assume he will go home with Vera and continue to live his life.
So, what has been haunting Indy is not actually a ghost, it is Todd’s illness, and it manifests itself as the evil mud-covered figure. Dogs can see and feel things that we cannot, including illness. In his mysterious doggy way, he has been sensing that Todd is terminally ill, which is sad and scary to him.
All of this is not to say that there are no ghosts in the story, however. The visions Indy sees of Todd’s grandfather (who also seems to have died of a lung condition) and of his dog Bandit could very well be residual ghosts. And it’s pretty sad that Bandit appears to have died while trying to save his own human from his terminal illness, starving to death in the cellar.
I absolutely loved Good Boy, I saw it three days ago, and I am still thinking about it. Apparently, a lot of other people feel the same, because the film made $2.3 million in its first three days of release. It is thus far the third highest grossing theatrical release for Shudder, behind only In a Violent Nature and Late Night With the Devil.