Shudder’s new horror movie Good Boy, due to be released on the streaming service on October 3, has just released its heartbreaking first trailer. If you’ve not heard of the film before, it tells the story of a man and his dog moving into the supposedly haunted house of a recently deceased relative. That all sounds like standard genre stuff so far, but there’s a catch: this time, the terror unfolds from the perspective of the man’s dog, Indy (who’s playing himself).
Even reading that brief synopsis is enough to make me want to burst into tears, and so far, early reviews prove I’m right to feel like that. Described as the most heartbreaking horror of the year, Good Boy already has an epic Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 95%, and the social media reactions to its poster reveal were off the hook. Basically, if you’ve ever thought about getting a Shudder subscription, you’re going to need to do it by the end of September (it truly is one of the best streaming services around for indie horror movies).
But back to the trailer itself. Within 90 seconds, your emotions are truly tested as we find out what fresh hell awaits Indy at his new place of residence, and frankly, I don’t think I can handle a full feature-length version of this niche level of torture. However, there’s one reason I need to see Good Boy more than I need to do anything else… I have to find out if Indy survives. Surely Shudder wouldn’t be that cruel, right?
Good Boy’s first trailer is the worst thing I’ve had to watch this year so far, and that’s scaring me
Let’s dig a little deeper. Shudder immediately goes for the jugular by starting the Good Boy trailer with flashback footage of Indy when he was a puppy, growing up with his humans and loving everything that life had to throw at him. SOB. Then his owner, a mysterious man we never see the face of, starts getting ill, which prompts the pair to move into a log cabin you couldn’t pay me to spend an hour in. From here, the trailer turns dark, with Indy plagued by strange shadows, bloody footsteps and an owner who’s begun acting like he’s possessed.
This prompts a lot of cutaways of puppy dog eyes, sad whining, and frantic spurts of barking to try and get his person back to normal. It’s the absolute worst thing you could see in a horror movie, and Shudder knows that. Whenever something bad happens onscreen, we want to know that the animals were unharmed, because who cares about the humans? Good Boy takes that way of thinking and makes it a nightmare in itself, and I’ve thought about Indy every day since I knew the movie even existed.
So, would Shudder be brave (or brazen) enough to actually kill off an innocent dog at the hands of the supernatural? We certainly can’t rule it out. The streamer is where filmmakers go to take risks that more mainstream brands like Netflix probably wouldn’t run with, so anything goes. That being said, you don’t want your dog-killing movie to be remembered for all the wrong reasons, so I’d guess Good Boy just stops short of what we fear the most… but only just.
Frankly, Halloween is going to be all the more terrifying just by having this streaming at the click of a button, and that’s before we get to the tail end of 2025 releases (pun intended).
