2025's Performance Of The Year Isn't Even Human
As the year winds down and awards season chatter begins, some names are beginning to pop up for the best acting performances of the year: Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another (2025), Jessie Buckley for Hamnet (2025), and Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein (2025). All of these are wonderful performances, but they’re not exactly revolutionary. However, the most revolutionary performance of 2025 isn’t from a veteran actor. It’s from a first-time actor who had never appeared in a movie before. And the real kicker? This actor isn’t even human.
Indy is a dog who obviously doesn’t have any dialogue, yet the emotion and empathy he instills in the viewer are impossible to ignore. If you want to see a performance unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, then you need to head over to Shudder and watch Good Boy (2025).
Who Needs CGI When You Have Indy, The Dog Actor?
While Good Boy may seem like a simple horror movie that lasts only 73 minutes, the actual process of bringing Indy’s debut to screen was far from it. Filmed over the course of three years and with a budget of only $70,000, director Ben Leonberg was adamant not to use CGI whatsoever to enhance or alter Indy’s performance. That also meant that actually capturing usable footage of Indy was immensely difficult. Indy is a dog after all, and he doesn’t have any concept that he’s in a film.
To make him look confused, Leonberg would say gibberish to him or do strange actions like putting a shoe on his head. To make him appear scared, Leonberg utilized classic filmmaking techniques to make Indy appear frightened instead of actually scaring him. For example, having a shot of Indy stare blankly, only to cut to something terrifying, gives the illusion that Indy is staring at it. Add in some creepy sound design, and your brain will fill in the void and assume that Indy is scared of what he’s looking at.
To be clear, this wasn’t a simple process. To get Indy acclimated to the house in Good Boy, Leonberg and his wife, Kari Fischer, the film’s producer, lived in the house for all three years of filming. They could only film for a few hours each day due to Indy’s unpredictability. He, of course, is a dog, so there were plenty of shots that were interrupted by Indy chasing a squirrel or just not giving the reaction that Leonberg wanted. In total, Leonberg recorded over 400 hours of footage for Good Boy, which required a heavy amount of editing to make Indy’s performance as effective as it is.
What Is ‘Good Boy’ About?
Good Boy is about Indy and his owner, Todd, played by Shane Jensen, who leave New York City to live in a cabin in the woods. The cabin was home to Todd’s grandfather, who died under mysterious circumstances, but that doesn’t really bother Todd, given his own declining health.
If you’re trying to figure out what type of horror movie Good Boy is, it’s a movie about a haunted house. A spirit haunts the estate, and while Todd can’t see anything, Indy is able to see and sense the presence. At its core, it’s not dissimilar to movies like Insidious (2011) or The Conjuring (2013). People enter a spooky house, and there’s nothing too disturbing about it at first, but it slowly becomes more and more disturbing. But what helps separate Good Boy from other horror movies is Indy.
He never speaks, and we never see his thoughts, but thanks to Leonberg’s editing, we truly believe that he’s concerned for his owner and afraid of the spectre haunting them. It took a lot of effort to make Indy’s performance as believable as it is, but it’s easily the best thing about the film. There have been a lot of great dog performances recently, like in Anatomy of a Fall (2023) and The Friend (2025), but Indy’s is one of, if not the best.
Does The Dog Die In ‘Good Boy’?
Given how Good Boy is a horror movie starring a dog, the natural question that’s bound to be asked is Indy’s ultimate fate. Does Indy die at the end of Good Boy?
Thankfully, the answer to that is no, he doesn’t. Without going into major spoilers, Indy does not die in the movie, but we do see footage of another dog who used to live at the house with Todd’s grandfather encountering the spirit. It never attacks the other dog on screen, but a skeleton in the climax indicates that the dog most likely died alongside Todd’s grandfather. It’s a sad end, but given how we rarely see that dog, it’s not quite as tragic as if Indy died. The ending is still sad and may put a tear in your eye, but it won’t be because of anything that happens to Indy.
