The Director of ‘Good Boy’ on Creating Horror From a Dog’s Point of View

Most dog owners can recall at least one instance where their pup has reacted to a seemingly invisible presence. Are they picking up a sound pitched higher than our hearing? Sniffing out the memory of a dropped piece of food? Or perhaps… using their canine super-senses to detect something supernatural?

Good Boy, the feature debut of director and co-writer Ben Leonberg, takes that idea and runs with it, following Indy (played by Leonberg’s own dog) and his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), as they move into the former home of Todd’s late grandfather. It’s a gloomy, dark, isolated place, and—as Indy soon realizes—it appears to be teeming with unquiet spirits.

Ahead of Good Boy‘s release next week, io9 got a chance to talk to Leonberg, with a quick hello from Indy too.

It Began With ‘Poltergeist’

Cheryl Eddy, io9: I’m curious about the initial idea for Good Boy. Did you know you wanted to do a horror movie as your first feature? When did the idea of centering it on Indy become a part of it?

Ben Leonberg:It’s probably not hard to predict, if I have a dog named Indy, that some of my favorite films are, broadly speaking, genre [films] . Horror is just something—because I’m such a fan of the craft of filmmaking, at least the kind that I’m really excited about—I think about all the time. So I’m not surprised I made a horror movie first.

And in terms of the idea of where it came from, to crystallize a moment I can remember, I was watching Poltergeist probably for the millionth time, and if you remember, that film starts with the Golden Retriever wandering around the house, clearly clued in that something haunting is going on before the humans have realized it. I thought, “Someone should make a story entirely from that dog’s point of view.” And it took a long time to figure out how to actually tell that story, but the result was Good Boy.

io9: The haunted house is a classic horror setting—in Poltergeist, obviously, but many others too—and Good Boy really leans into those elements. The door’s creaking; the power goes out. How did you approach making those tropes feel fresh by filming them from the dog’s point of view?

Leonberg: I think the point of view of the dog was the challenge and the solution. Just by virtue of, sometimes, what it would actually take to put the camera in a dog’s point of view for this scene that feels familiar because it’s been played out in many horror films before. Filming it from a dog’s point of view made it feel fresh because the camera is in a place no one’s ever seen this take place from before.

I think a lot of the scenes work because most horror films are following human characters. So take a scene where the person walks into a room and [says] , “That’s weird—the dog is staring at an empty corner.” In our film, we’re seeing the moment before the human walks in. We’re seeing that dog follow this invisible thing and get to this place. So it’s almost like the film is a behind-the-scenes look at a setting or a circumstance that audiences kind of intuitively already understand but have never seen play out just this way.

Plus, Some Charlie Brown Inspiration

io9: We never really see the faces of the human characters. Why did you want to structure it that way?

Leonberg:It was both a creative and a practical consideration. The practical reason is that Indy is my own dog, and as I learned how to work with him, one of the things I quickly realized is that for some of the really genuine, real emotional moments [with] Todd, the easiest way [was for me] to stand in as the human talent for the scene.

As we discovered the way we were going to make the movie, it just became very clear that I was going to need to both film, direct, and edit the movie, but then also run around and be on camera to play the body of Todd. To be very clear, Shane Jensen, who provides the voice, he plays Todd. The voice is what really gives Todd his performance. I’m not really an actor. Having my face off camera would then allow me to talk to Indy, saying lines that are not what is genuinely genuinely being heard by the audience, but would direct his performance while I was on camera with him

I think creatively, it just speaks to the way we wanted the film to unfold [in a way that] focuses and centers the storytelling on a dog’s point of view. Indy’s eyeline is only 19 inches off the ground. There were plenty of times I would have had to actually do something quite a bit odd with the camera to get the human faces into the story.

A point of reference we sometimes would bring up was Muppet Babies, or maybe Charlie Brown, where the adults in the story are never quite seen. They’re heard off camera, or we see them from the waist down, because it’s a story of the Muppet Babies or the kids of the Charlie Brown [Peanuts] world. So, too, with Good Boy focusing purely on dog level, where every shot of the story is either from Indy’s point of view or a shot of Indy, it kind of naturally works that the humans are not centered. So again, creative and practical.

Indy’s Acting Process

io9: How much of it was you directing him and how much was sort of spontaneously capturing his behavior and then working that into the film?

Leonberg: I would say it’s a pretty even split, but the word “directing” is kind of interesting, just because when working with a dog, even the best-trained dog in the world—who is not Indy, but that’s also what makes him good for this movie—you can’t just give him instructions and ask him to follow them. Even when it felt like I was really directing him, I was providing stimuli that he was genuinely reacting to.

To hold his gaze in a close-up, I usually had a piece of food just off camera, so I would get him locked in on that and then he would get the food. Rinse and repeat. You can get several takes that way.

At other times, another shot that I think would feel very directed is: Indy starts off-camera, I roll things, I go hide somewhere in the set, I call him in by making a sound, and he walks into the scene, and then I abruptly start quacking like a duck. In the edited film, the sound design [and] the music makes it seem like when Indy turns his head towards the quacking sound, there are no quacking sounds. It’s Indy hearing the floorboard creak that shouldn’t be creaking.

So, it’s interesting to say how much of it is directing versus his genuine reaction. Because there also are certainly times where the way Indy weaves in between my legs when I get out of bed in the morning, which is kind of this cute little idiosyncratic thing that he does for real, we managed to capture that as a way to show Todd and Indy’s relationship, that they love each other. This is a ritual they have, and that kind of physicality is returned to as the story progresses and the relationship deepens and the haunting intensifies.

The Supporting Cast

io9: And while the movie is essentially two characters, we do have a few others, including Todd’s grandfather, played by indie horror legend Larry Fessenden, as well as Bandit, the ghostly dog. What were your experiences like working with them?

Leonberg:We were able to get in touch with [Larry and] I think he just enjoyed and liked the idea. We were filming with Larry actually well after principal photography had wrapped. We filmed with Indy—just me, Indy, and my wife [producer Kari Fischer] doing all of the jobs together for three years, over 400 days. And we brought Larry at the end basically to fill in the gaps. Then shortly thereafter we also brought in [more] human talent to then provide voices and create all of the sounds and visuals that really make the movie sing.

Larry’s been great. I mean, he knows exactly what to do. He has been in lots of horror movies and understands the genre so well. So after three years of working with a dog who—I cannot say it enough—does not know he’s in a horror movie, to tell Larry just like, “Oh, it’s a scene…” You know, he gets what’s on the script. He knows exactly how to execute. And it was like, great, three takes. We’re good. And he’s been an amazing cheerleader for the film as well. He’s just really like the patron saint of horror movies.

io9: What about the ghost dog? How was his work ethic?

Leonberg: So we started working on the film with Indy because he was my own dog and I found this unique way to work with him. So I wondered, would it work also to just see if I could get my parents’ dog to give a similar performance? I will say what makes Indy so uniquely qualified for this is that he’s a naturally very serious and driven dog. He likes to have a job.

Max, who plays Bandit, required many more pet breaks and frequently wanted to run off camera to just lay in your lap and be cuddled and loved, which of course we obliged him, but he was a little slower going. Though at the end of the day, I think he ultimately gives a great performance, which—credit to my wife; she was wrangling Max and brought it out of him.

What’s Next for Good Boy‘s Breakout Star?

io9: You mentioned Indy likes to have a job. Is this his first and last movie, or do you think he’ll be back for more?

Leonberg: We certainly have more ideas for dog storytelling, you know, whether it’s another Good Boyfilm or another kind of dog-centered film. As for Indy, I think he was very uniquely qualified to make this film but the way we made this film is very unusual [compared] to how most films are made, which is to say, 12 hours a day, day after day, until it concludes. We filmed for three one- to three-hour chunks over three years and I think that style will be difficult to replicate with most other productions.

So he’s probably gonna retire after this. Again, he had no idea he was working to begin with, but I don’t know. Maybe the right dog food Super Bowl commercial will come around and he’ll come out of retirement.

io9: How old is he?

Leonberg: He’s eight years old. I don’t know how old Indy appears to look, but just very conveniently, dogs don’t age like people and don’t require hair and makeup to be ready to film. So making the film over the duration we did, working with a dog has its advantages.

io9: I love that you put the puppy footage in there too, so cute.

Leonberg: Yes, and that’s him. That’s genuinely him.

Good Boy opens in theaters October 3; we’ll have more from io9’s interview with Leonberg after it hits theaters.

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