Honestly, I rarely give media five stars or a 10/10 rating as I always see how it could improve in one way or another. “Good Boy”, however, has earned all five stars and all ten points. Not only does it soar with its concept, it sticks an impeccable landing and even does an impressive pose at the end. I absolutely recommend “Good Boy” to anyone who loves horror movies.

**Be warned, spoilers await in this review.**

Before I get into the details of the movie, there’s one thing that needs to be addressed. Does the dog die? The answer is no! Indy, the dog that serves as the lead for 2025’s “Good Boy”, survives the events of the movie. However, it’s not exactly a happy ending either.

“Good Boy” is a horror movie from Indy’s perspective. While Indy’s owner, Todd, is blissfully unaware of the dangers around him, Indy sees the horrifying entity haunting his owner the entire time and desperately tries to understand the strange and creepy situations that go down. At least, that’s what the movie makes it seem like at first glance.

However, the movie’s plot is in reality not that simple. To make it simple, I won’t be discussing the plot of the movie in chronological order. Instead, I will be going into detail about the movie’s plot twist in the final act, and the importance of the movie’s message.

At first, the movie subtly steers the viewer towards the idea that Todd and Indy are being attacked by a malicious apparition. In the final act, however, this pretense is completely dropped as the truth comes out: Indy and Todd weren’t being haunted by a ghost, but by the disease that was gradually overtaking Todd’s life.

Throughout the movie, an ominous, almost black, creature covered in mud strikes at random moments, often approaching Indy from the dark or from behind. At first, it seems like this monster is out to get Indy and eventually Todd, but this creature isn’t as real as it seems. Despite the movie’s attempts to trick you into believing it’s your standard malevolent spectre, the mud ‘ghost’ is merely a visual representation of Indy’s worst nightmare – losing his owner.

The brutal truth that the movie presents halfway through its runtime, is that Todd is on borrowed time, and it’s almost up. Knowing his time is coming, Todd moves out of his New York apartment and shacks up in his late Grandpa’s old house. As Todd cleans up the place over the course of a few days to weeks, his health worsens. 

There’s something to be said about the house becoming nicer while Todd gets worse. The whole time, Todd tries to make the house look good, but he can’t clean the dirty core that remains. As we find out, Todd’s family has a long history of dying young, which is emphasized as Todd says this while visiting his family cemetery with Indy.

While the details of how his family dies young is up in the air, the point is made. Todd is another victim of a generational curse. Just like his now fallen grandpa, Todd stubbornly refuses to accept help from others and isolates himself, leading to his tragic passing at the end.

On the topic of the ending, it is heart-wrenching as the truth of the mud figure’s presence is finally revealed. To understand it, however, some explaining is necessary. Obviously, Todd gets worse as the movie progresses, but every time he does, this mud creature is not far behind. That’s because this mud creature is a representation of Todd’s disease. 

Every time Todd gets worse, the creature appears and ‘attacks’ Indy. It’s important to remember that the movie is from Indy’s perspective. What Indy sees isn’t exactly real. Indy knows that Todd is dying, but he can’t accept this fact because why would he? He’s a dog, grief isn’t something he understands like a human does. Indy can’t mourn like a human.

If his human dies, Indy is lost. Indy can smell the disease killing Todd, but he doesn’t understand why it’s killing him and anxiously imagines it as a monster to try and make sense of what’s going on. Indy desperately wants to protect Todd from this ‘monster’ attacking him, but he can’t.

In the end, Todd seemingly dies in his bed, but suddenly he rises from the bed confused as he sees the mud creature for the first time. As the creature closes in, Indy appears and rushes to his side just in time to ease his fears. However, Todd notices Indy is distraught and looking behind him. When Todd turns to where Indy is looking, he sees his corpse still on the bed.

As realization sets in, Todd is dragged away by the mud creature into the house’s basement. Indy gives chase and grabs hold of Todd, but it’s too late. As Todd and Indy sit in the basement in front of an ominous cavern in the wall, the mud creature arrives and steadily walks closer.

Knowing that his time is up, Todd looks to Indy and tells him to let go and move on. With those being his final words, Todd quickly gets swallowed by mud and becomes a skeleton before disappearing into thin air. With Todd gone, Indy sits in the basement, confused and lost. Fortunately a few hours later, Todd’s sister Vera arrives and finds Indy.

Given a choice to move on and join Vera in life, or wait for Todd in the basement until death comes for him next, Indy chooses life and follows Vera.

What really sells the tragedy of this movie is the fact that throughout its entire runtime, Todd pushes away everyone who tries to help him (Indy included), but at the end, it’s Indy who’s by his side before he goes to the other side. It is thanks to Indy that Todd can accept that it’s time for him to pass on.

So the twist is that Todd was dying of disease, and the ghost wasn’t real after all. So what is this mud creature supposed to represent anyway? From what I can tell, the mud creature is a personification of death in relation to Todd’s illness.

From what the movie gives us, Todd has a terminal lung disease, and in a few scenes he coughs up blood (which occasionally turns to mud when seen from Indy’s point of view). The only other creature that has any connection to mud, is the entity that ‘haunts’ the house.

What makes this movie so impactful, is that a majority of its run time is Indy being distraught as he sees terrifying things unfold while his owner acts like nothing’s wrong.

Once you know the twist however, these horror scenes become tragic as we realize that Indy is imagining Todd’s medical decline as these hauntings, and sees Todd’s illness as this horrific creature. It’s amazing, yet tragic, how one plot twist recontextualizes the entire movie from a horror, to a tragedy. Even worse, it was told to us from the beginning.

In the beginning of the movie, the mud creature appears as a shadow in the corner of Todd’s apartment as he has a seizure. It is here, where the movie outright tells the viewer that death is following Todd.

To anyone interested in seeing the movie, it is available for streaming on the Shudder app, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube Movies.