Sit, stay, scare! An adorable dog stars in mild haunted house horror ‘Good Boy’

The lead of the horror-tinged heart-tugger “Good Boy” is a copper-colored retriever named Indy who pads around an eerie house deep in the New Jersey woods investigating its mysterious creaks, shadows and smells. Like the Method-style actors of “The Blair Witch Project,” he goes by his real name onscreen. An ordinary dog without a whiff of Hollywood hokum, Indy doesn’t do implausible stunts like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin or comprehend anything that his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), says besides simple phrases: sit, stay and, gratefully, the title itself. But we’re invested in the mindset of this mundane hero. His nose twitches are as dramatic as an ingenue’s gasp.

First-time feature director Ben Leonberg raised Indy as a pet first, movie star second. Along with his wife, Kari Fischer, who produced the film, Leonberg shot “Good Boy” in his weekend house, staging scenarios for Indy to explore until he had enough material for a (barely) full-length spook show. Even at 72 minutes, “Good Boy” is belabored in the middle stretch. It would make a fabulous one-hour TV special.

Using his personal footage, Leonberg (who also edited the film and did its gorgeous, inky-wet cinematography) opens with a montage of Indy growing up from a tiny puppy to a loyal best friend. We love the dog more in five minutes than we do some slasher final girls who’ve survived several sequels. Indy is the most empathetic scream queen of the year so far — and I mean that literally as his breed, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling retriever, is known for its high-pitched wail. American Kennel Club lists the Toller as the U.S.’s 87th most popular dog. I expect this movie will lead to an uptick. (Steve Martin already has one.)

What’s wrong in Indy’s new home? A pair of tragedies wind together like vines, although from the dog’s point of view, the distinction between them isn’t always obvious. This battered two-story home with ominous scratches on the basement door has been in Todd’s family for six generations, as the cemetery out back proves. Bequeathed to the youngish urban hipster by his grandfather (indie cult icon Larry Fessenden), a misanthrope who willed his taxidermy collection to a vegan, it’s a good place to disappear.

Todd, who’s in bad physical and emotional shape, has isolated himself in this scraggly, foggy forest to get some privacy from his sister, Vera (Arielle Friedman). There’s also a past death that the dog is able to perceive. A sniff of a rotting old chair frightens Indy so much, he wets the rug.

“Scaredy pants,” Todd teases Indy. The dog can’t explain what only he knows.

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Several unnerving things are happening at once, including the presence of a silhouetted stalker, old bones that give the dog nightmares and Todd’s unpredictable mood swings. There’s also a ghost in the movie, I think — at least, there’s a heavy hinge that shouldn’t be able to open without a spectral nudge. Indy stands about two feet tall, so the camera often stays at that height too, gliding close to the floor where the view from under the bed looks as big as an airplane hangar.

A realistic dog’s-eye view of a creepy cabin is a good hook, although people hoping to see an otherwise satisfying genre thriller will feel a bit underwhelmed that Leonberg and his co-screenwriter Alex Cannon are conflicted about pushing the scary elements of the film too far into the supernatural. With a complicated backstory off the table (Indy looks restless whenever adults are having a conversation), the movie taps into our burgeoning belief that animals do have a special sixth sense, like how hospice workers know to pay special attention to whoever gets night visits from the resident pet.

Still, “Good Boy” doesn’t stray too far from the film’s core strength: a normal dog doing normal dog things. In a twitch, a head tilt or a whine, Indy communicates his emotions: curious, lonely, contented, confused, fretful, desperate or petrified. There’s no CG in the dog’s performance, no corny reaction shots and no use of animal doubles either. Todd’s own legs, however, are often doubled by Leonberg, an onscreen switcheroo that’s possible because the lens doesn’t tend to look up.

I liked the plot better on a second watch when I knew not to expect Jamie Lee Curtis on all fours. The ending is great and the build up to it, though draggy, gives you space to think about the interdependence between our species. Dogs are wired to be our protectors and yet, through generations of nurturing, they’ve come to trust that we’ll also protect them. The inarticulate betrayal in the film is that Todd isn’t making good decisions for anyone. His bond with Indy is pure and strong, yet one-sided in that Todd is too distracted to ease the dog’s fears. Indy is bereft to be left alone for long stretches of time in a strange house. But he can’t do a thing about that, nor the sputtering electricity, the fox traps in the brush and the neighbor (Stuart Rudin) who skulks around in hunting camouflage.

In Todd’s facelessness, he’s a stand-in for whatever you want: absentee parents, a struggling partner or child or friend. There’s a scene in which he comes home in obvious need of a cuddle, only to push his dog away. Maybe you’ve been both people in that shot: the person overwhelmed by their own pain and the loved one who has no idea how to soothe them. It’s terrifying to love someone this much, to give them the full force of your devotion only to get locked outside.

Consciously or not, Leonberg has made a primal film about helplessness. Watching it, I was knocked sideways by a sense memory of how it felt to be a child. Like Indy, kids get dragged around to places they don’t want to go to for reasons that aren’t explained, and when they whine, they’re commanded to pipe down. Even as we get older — when our own point of view can stand taller than two feet — the things that truly scare us are the ones that make us feel small and confused.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.