You wait for one Good Boy and two come along within three years of each other. While the arrival of two very different horror movies under the same title can cause some confusion, this year’s Shudder/IFC film has a unique premise that sets it apart from almost every other horror movie ever made – a haunted house chiller told from the viewpoint of a dog. This has resulted in the film grabbing a lot of attention in recent weeks – not least for landing a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score – scoring a huge box office win, and instigating a 2000% increase in Google searches for a morbid question: Does the dog die in Good Boy?
After the trailer for Good Boy dropped in August, the massive spike in Google searches suggested that what could have been a very niche, festival-bound movie was growing into something else. Essentially, the core idea of having a dog as the main focus of the film has piqued interest in what would otherwise have been just another microbudget horror movie that Shudder has in large volumes. This has proven to be a genius move by Ben Leonberg, whose own Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, Indy, leads the movie that has grabbed the internet by the throat and has already landed third place in Shudder/IFC Films’ list of their highest grossing original movies.
Late Night with the Devil currently holds the top spot on that chart, with $10 million earned in 2023, and is followed by last year’s In a Violent Nature – another movie with a unique viewpoint, this time from the POV of a killer rather than his victims – which amassed $4.2 million. Good Boy took $2.3 million across previews/opening day, which means that the weekend could see it jump into second position on that table.
‘Good Boy’ Has Been Receiving Rave Reviews
Critical response to Good Boy has certainly helped elevate it in the public’s perception, and going up against Dwayne Johnson’s Oscar-contender The Smashing Machine would suggest it needed all the help it could get. However, the word-of-mouth reaction to the film, and the impression it has made on internet searches and social media, have proven that maybe Good Boy is just one of those movies that is proving that innovative and creative filmmaking is still a thing, and when it lands, it really lands.
Alongside the film’s exceptional critical score, it has also drawn in a treat of an audience score, which currently sits at 86%. One review called it a movie that “delivers on its unique premise” and features “the Daniel Day-Lewis of dog actors.” Another wished they had never watched the film as they were “scared for the dog the entire way through.” While some wished the film was longer, its incredibly short 73-minute runtime probably works in its favor, not allowing the gimmick to grow old.
To make the movie, Leonberg spent 400 days across three years capturing every scene exactly as he intended, a labor of love that has paid off massively. As you might expect, filming from the viewpoint of a real dog, and not an added-in CGI creation, means that there were many times that Indy just did not do what was required. As Leonberg put it, it was “probably not any different than a director feels when they are working with an actor who just can’t get the line right.” However, everything did eventually come together, and now the movie looks like it is going to be another huge success for a Shudder original in cinemas.
- Release Date
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October 3, 2025
- Runtime
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73 minutes
- Director
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Ben Leonberg
- Writers
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Alex Cannon, Ben Leonberg
