The Story Behind How Good Boy’s Director Made A Horror Movie Around His Own Dog

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There have been so many great horror experiences on the 2025 movie schedule, but few have captured the heart of the internet more than Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy. Told from the perspective of a retriever exploring a haunted house, the movie gets a whole lot better when you realize how the first-time director made a horror movie around his own dog, Indy.

Ahead of the Good Boy premiere, Ben Leonberg spoke with CinemaBlend about his unique film and the adorable pooch at the center of its story. During the chat, he opened up about everything from everyone’s fear Indy would die, to what it was like making one of the most anticipated horror movies of the year with his wife and trusty pet:

Indy’s my actual dog. My wife and I got him as a puppy. We didn’t think he’d be a movie star when we got him. We just got him to be our friend. And that’s really all he’s been trained for. … It took several years as we were writing the movie. And, he’s a kind of dog who loves to have a job. He’s a retriever, so he’s looking to do something. Usually it’s tennis ball related, but he was very game for ‘let’s make a movie for three years.’

So, how did Leonberg and his wife make a young dog feel comfortable making a movie? Would you believe us if we said they lived in Good Boy’s haunted house? Because that’s what happened:

So we actually did not go back and forth [between set and our home]. We lived on the set, that was our house. … And part of the reason for that is that the way we found to work with Indy to get the performance we got him treating that house like it’s his house.

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Leonberg explained that spending so much time living at the house made Indy feel more comfortable and more natural, which allowed for the dog’s true self to come out and be reflected in the movie. As the director put it:

It allowed us to capture some things that otherwise wouldn’t happen, like the way a dog falls asleep. When I get out of bed in the morning, he weaves between my legs as a way to start the day. These genuine little moments that you can’t really train a dog to do, or at least I don’t know how to train the dog to do, we were able to get because the movie, or at least the location, was real for Indy.

Though the haunted house was real to Indy throughout the shoot, Ben Leonberg revealed that he and his wife had to go to great lengths to make a “charming house in the woods” look like some place where nightmares are born. Over the course of three years, the couple did everything they could to make it look that way.

All of this effort seems to have been worth it, as Good Boy is already getting stellar reviews. With a 91% critic score and 89% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a three-and-a-half out of five-star review in CinemaBlend’s official review, this could be one of the most universally beloved horror movies of the year. That’s saying something.

It will be interesting to see where Ben Leonberg and Indy go from here, because another horror movie, a buddy comedy or a sports flick could all be great. Regardless, getting to hang out with man’s best friend and make a movie sounds like a whole lot of fun.