The Gut-Punch Ending of Good Boy, Explained by Its Director

Spoilers for Good Boy ahead.

Good Boy is a novel concept in the haunted-house genre — it’s told entirely from the point of view of a dog, and it’s got a surprisingly moving twist in its tail, sorry, tale. Co-written and directed by Ben Leonberg, who is also star pup Indy’s owner in real life, it tells the story of Todd (Shane Jensen), a man suffering with an unnamed serious illness, who takes his dog to live with him in his late grandfather’s old house in the country. But there’s eerie stuff going down on this old farmhouse, and Todd just won’t heed his furry best friend’s warnings.

When Good Boy premiered at SXSW earlier this year, it was the surprise hit of the festival, with one critic going as far as to dub Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, as “one of the most emotive acto