Good Boy

Directed by Ben Leonberg, Good Boy follows a man (Shane Jensen’s Todd) as he and his dog Indy find themselves pursued by malevolent spirits within an isolated home in the woods. Filmmaker Leonberg, armed with his and Alex Cannon’s screenplay, initially does a solid job of putting a novel spin on a familiar narrative, as Good Boy, for the most part, unfolds entirely from Indy’s point of view and details the dog’s growing realization that something’s very wrong – with the picture certainly benefiting from the less-than-conventional approach. (And it doesn’t hurt, surely, that Indy himself makes for a surprisingly compelling hero.) It’s equally apparent, however, that Good Boy begins to palpably run out of steam once it progresses into a padded-out, repetitive midsection, with the picture’s spare plot, coupled with its lack of periphery characters (ie a dog can be compelling only for so long, it turns out), paving the way for a fairly disastrous (and overly abstract) final stretch – which ultimately confirms the movie’s place as an interesting idea that just doesn’t work within the context of a full-length feature.

* out of ****