Look at the house, Indy! This article contains severe spoilers For “good boy”.
Does the dog die? This is both the name of an incredibly necessary website and one of the most common fears among moviegoers. The question has rarely been more appropriate than with the frightening haunted house film of Ben Leonberg, “Good Boy”, which features a dog and spends all his execution time in armaments the possibility that the courageous puppy dying a horrible horror film of death.
Without doubt the first truly frightening horror film of 2025, “Good Boy” presents Indy the dog (like himself). Indy has problems that it is poorly equipped to solve. His master Todd (Shane Jensen) is not good and sometimes unleashes him despite the fact that he is obviously a good boy. Todd also continues to drag him to frightening places like an old unknown house and a strange cemetery that Indy just knows trouble. Oh, and he continues to hear strange groans, the shadows seem to be alive and his dreams are suddenly extremely bizarre. There is also that.
Being a dog, Indy has no understanding (even less solution to) these problems. He therefore does what he can: he protects his master and explores the territory although he is perfectly aware that something unknown shares the house with them. He does his best to comfort his human even when Todd repels him. He does not know the horror tropes, only canine curiosity and devotion. Thus, whenever there is a strange noise, a disturbing pair of eyes or a mysteriously open door, he investigates. This means that during a large part of the film, Indy is deliberately jogging in the horror scenarios that the public was conditioned to believe is not retained. This allows a “good boy” to place his holder in danger deeply and many times, and to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats.
The film uses Indy’s ignorance to horror tropes to maintain the vague supernatural threat
In addition to using Indy as a protagonist, “Good Boy” makes him the character from point of view. In addition to the occasional exhibiting telephone call, the line and the black and white television images, the public learns only the house, the state of Todd and the supernatural threat what Indy does, which maintains all this extremely vague. Are the bizarre actions of Todd in the room caused by his pain and his despair, or is he stealthily possessed by the entity which leads him to Doom? Indy has no way to know, so neither has the spectator.
Sometimes, it seems that Indy only survives her meetings with the supernatural because the semi-corporal entity haunting the house inexplicably chooses to withdraw. In other scenes, the ghost of the house seems to be wary around Indy, which is often not afraid to head towards the abyss who looks back. Halfway, when the altercations become physical, it seems legitimately that the film could have chosen to kill its four-legged protagonist, to reveal that the entity simply moved Indy to a different place.
A possible explanation for this dynamic comes in one of the many black and white television clips in the film. He portrays dogs as intrepid creatures that have kept humanity against things that will bang in the night since the era of the men of the caves. Perhaps a mystical property of this former caretaker duty interferes with the Monster’s Manigances, encouraging him to dodge Indy and seek indirect means to go to Todd. These roundabout methods culminate in the entity that encourages Indy to commit ultimate sin and bite his master, which creates a temporary gap between them and wins the poor Indy a passage as a chained courtyard. A really low blow, even for a deadly paranormal creature.
A dog will die as a good boy – but not the dog you think
Of course, even the involvement in the middle of the film according to which the entity may not harm Indy turns out to be a false flag. The big turn of the film is that he really has two Cute dogs … and the previous four -legged occupant of the house met a terrible end for which the ghost also attracts Indy.
The fate that the house seeks to impose on Todd and Indy is foreshadowing by recordings and supernatural visions of the Todd grandfather (Horror Luminy Larry Fessenden) and his Golden Retriever, Bandit (Max). It turns out that the old man – with it, it turns out that most other parents of Todd – died of a strange and relatively early death, and Bandit is strongly implicit to have crossed a test similar to the Indy. Only, this dog could not leave the base of the culminating terror that the entity brought a locking. The climax “Good Boy” reveals that the semi-bouncing remains of Bandit, always trapped in the cellar after the house took its master.
Fortunately, Indy is more likely. While Todd suffers almost the same fate as his grandfather, his sister (Arielle Friedman) arrives to search the house after failing to reach it and frees Indy from his situation under the basement. Just before Indy chooses very wisely leaving the exit of the cellar at her request, the entity tries to attract him in return with a whistle, confirming that he was throughout Indy to share the bandit spell from the start. “Good Boy” has been on the list of 2025 horror films of interesting films for a long time, and although it is in no way perfect, Indy The Dog is a lot – and it is impressive how much mileage of its real owner Leonberg manages to withdraw from our concern for his safety.
