Good Boy

This should’ve been a short film.

What a year it has been for horror. Films like The Monkey, Together, the box-office success of The Conjuring and Weapons — they all prove how the genre is waking up again and is still capable of delivering great results and new original ideas. And now to that list we can add a new internet sensation called Good Boy. A film that was never supposed to be a major release, but thanks to social media love and its unconventional idea, it’s now playing in theaters literally all around the world.

The uniqueness of this film lies in the fact that we are told the entire story through the eyes of a dog. This is the story of a dog named Indy and his owner who, suffering from a lung disease, moves out of the city into an old family house that, according to local legends, is filled with dark forces. The dog senses and notices all of this, and the film is essentially the story of how she watched her owner try to fight it.

Of course, you can look at this film from different angles. On one hand, it’s a mystical story about demons; on the other, these are the demons of self-destruction and the illness that is slowly winning over the dog’s owner. And we’re basically watching how the dog witnesses the slow death and moral decay of the person it loves most. It’s a great idea, and it looks incredibly compelling — the dog and the owner, who is actually the director himself, doing the project together. This good boy deserves an Oscar nomination. I fully support his candidacy for your consideration.

The film runs only 1 hour and 15 minutes. Today, some TV episodes are longer. But despite that, the film still feels long, and I caught myself checking the time several times. Naturally, that exposes some of its problems — like inconsistency and not enough depth for a full-length story. The pacing is quite spontaneous, and not all ideas or attempts to show something actually land successfully. Honestly, this could have been an absolutely incredible short film — like thirty minutes long.

But despite all that, it’s still a very engaging story, probably even more outside the film than within its content. Because it’s a project clearly made straight from the heart and with passion, with tiny resources, three years of constant work, and within a very close and tight circle of people. And of course, that shows on screen. And that’s exactly what deserves support, even if the film itself didn’t turn out to be the strongest.

6/10