They say dogs can sense death, staring at something just beyond our perception. In “Good Boy,” that instinct becomes the engine for an entire film. Directed by Ben Leonberg and produced by Kari Fischer, the story unfolds entirely from the perspective of a golden retriever named Indy, who seems to be the only one aware that a house carries a sinister presence. What begins as a simple “what if” idea blossoms into a chilling, 73-minute haunted-house thriller told through a dog’s eyes.
The concept is both ingenious and risky. Leonberg and Fischer spent years refining it, drawing inspiration from Jack London’s animal adventures and the horror tradition of films like “Poltergeist.” Without dialogue to rely on, the filmmakers built the narrative through images, sound, and Indy’s natural behavior, creating a cinematic language where panting, footsteps, and a thousand-yard stare become the keys to suspense. The result is eerie, playful, and surprisingly emotional, inviting viewers to see a ghost story through the gaze of man’s best friend.
For Leonberg, the idea had been percolating for over a decade. “I came up with the idea by watching ‘Poltergeist’ and thinking, man, somebody should tell a story entirely from the golden retriever’s perspective,” he explained. “I worked with a co-writer for years, really trying to crack the story…because we’re not using dialogue to tell the story. So how do you have all the narrative plot points that still feel like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and rising tension and conflict?”
The filmmaker leaned on literary inspiration to shape Indy’s point of view. “One of our big influences was Jack London, ‘White Fang,’ ‘The Call of the Wild,’ where his dog heroes are guided not by abstract thinking, but by basic sensation and simple reasoning,” Leonberg said. “That was a really good rule to govern how we wrote and tell the story.”
Still, making a movie with a dog as its lead wasn’t without challenges. Fischer recalled how slow the progress was in the early days of filming. “For the first nine months we were filming, you know, we’re only getting a shot or two a day,” she said. Leonberg admitted that those months tested their resolve. “This is not a normal way movies are made. But once we got that finale—the thunder and lightning, the rain, which was real fake rain…we’re like, OK, this is going to work. We have to keep with it.”
Unlike actors, Indy couldn’t be directed in the usual sense. “You can’t tell a dog, ‘walk into a room, hear a sound that isn’t there, react to it,’” Leonberg explained. “You need to almost incept the idea. Cameras would be rolling, Kari is maybe hiding behind a coat rack and goes, ‘shhhk!’ and then he reacts to that. You’re getting materials that, when put into the score and sound design, look like a performance.”
The sound design became a crucial layer in shaping Indy’s “acting.” “What you would have heard on the production audio is not scary at all. It is the two of us talking to Indy, ‘Who’s a good boy? Stay…please, for the love of God, stay,” Leonberg joked. With designers Kelly and Brian leading a small team, the production sound was tossed aside and rebuilt from scratch. “Indy’s footsteps, the collar jingle, all of that Foley is added after the fact. It was a titanic act to pull that off, and we could not be happier with the result.”
So, is Indy really giving a performance? “The only time I feel like we see a performance, it’s not a performance. It’s really him,” Leonberg said. “Those moments of genuine affection, that’s Indy being himself. Everything else, the audience is putting their emotions onto Indy, and the filmmaking suggests how they’re supposed to feel.” Fischer added that Indy’s penetrating stare had been there since puppyhood: “He would just sit in a corner and stare at us…so penetrating that it worked really well for the film.”
That ambiguity between reality and perception extends to the story itself. “You could read this movie as a paranormal thriller through a dog’s lens, or as this dog senses death…My favorite kind of horror, the stickiest, is the one where there are two ways to read it,” Leonberg said. “‘The Shining’ is the classic example, either it was supernatural, or it was all in their head. That ambiguity is the most exciting part of it.”
“Good Boy” opens in theaters on October 3. Listen to the whole conversation with Ben Leonberg and Kari Fischer below.
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The Playlist Presents: Ben Leonberg & Kari Fischer’s Recommendation Playlist
• “Akira”
• “Jane Eyre”
• “Northanger Abbey” (audio dramatization recommended)
Entertainment journalist, podcaster, and host of The Discourse and Bingeworthy podcasts, with bylines at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire.
