Horror movie fans can handle a lot. Nice people, the elderly, even sometimes children can be subjected to all manner of terror without alienating the audience. But theres one line not even the most hardened Terrifier fanatic can handle. Animals are so sacrosanct, so off-limits, that complete websites have been created to protect viewers from seeing a furry friend come to a bad end.So director Ben Leonberg and his producer Kari Fischer clearly enjoy living dangerously with their new movie Good Boy, a horror film told completely from the perspective of their dog Indy. This is a horror movie, its definitely a horror movie. But for Indy, this is a love story, Leonberg assures us upon entering the Den of Geek Studio at SXSW. He loves his person. He would do anything to protect him and hes detecting that something is wrong. And once he realizes that there is this malevolent force, hes trying to protect his owner at any cost.Of course it helps with Indys performance that Leonberg and Fischer were on-set to stand in for the movies human stars, which include indie horror legend Larry Fessenden and essayist Arielle Friedman. After all, Leonberg and Fischer are a real-life couple, and Indy is their dog.I had had this idea for a horror movie told entirely from the perspective of a dog probably after watching Poltergeist, which begins with the Golden Retriever exploring the house and clearly aware that somethings going on before the humans are, explains Leonberg. But it was the arrival of Indy that finally made the movie happen.We got Indy, started writing the script, and thinking we should test out this concept. One of those proof of concept shorts won him an acting award and that kind of forced our hand, Leonberg laughs.Not that Leonberg and Fischer didnt realize they had a born movie star living with them. Indys always had a really intense thousand-yard star, Fischer says. Ben likes to say it often happens before mealtime, but quite often even when he was just a little puppy, he would just sit there kind of expectantly staring at us and around corners. Hes always kind of given us a little bit of uncertainty.Every dog or pet owner has wondered, Why is my dog barking at nothing or staring at nothing?' adds Leonberg. Its spooky, but thats what humans bred dogs to doto be our first line of defense against unseen predators. We allude to this in the movie that there are things that dogs can pick up on that even modern science cant detect. There are bombs sniffing dogs that do a better job than any computer. There are things dogs are equipped to do that even we cant fully understand or pick up on, even now.While the focus on Indy offers interesting storytelling possibilities, it also created challenges for the production. Getting the camera down on his level was a practical challenge just because the lowest conventionally available tripods, high hats, are actually still too high, admits Leonberg. So we had to get creative with getting the camera on Indys level. For much of the movie, you would have characters off-camera just by the way they were normally framed.That focus on animal heights aligns Good Boy with another movie with Steven Spielberg connections, ET: The Extra-Terrestial. Its about the world of children in ET, and in Good Boy, its about the world of the dog. Not that he doesnt have this like intimate relationship with the human, its just that we see Indy weaving through the humans legs and like interacting with their hands and feet. Its almost like Indy becomes a silent film actor.Unlike actual silent actors, however, Indy is a dog and has different motivations. The dog does not know hes in a movie and he never will know hes in a movie, Leonberg says. So working with an actor who doesnt agree on the reality of the premise that were making a film together is definitely challenging.He continues, But there are huge advantages to that. We had to build the production, which is both a limitation and an asset. We built the production around Indys schedule, around the things he already naturally does. Theres things that he does in the movie that you cant really train a dog to do, or at least I dont know how to train a dog to do. You cant train a dog to fall asleep on command. You just have to know the dogs everyday routine and schedule, and be ready with cameras rolling when he falls asleep and wakes up. But through careful editing and shot selection and the mix of objective and subjective shots, it all feels like its still from his subjectivity.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!That challenge also allows Leonberg and Fischer to create a more relatable horror movie because it draws the audience in. If you film that and then film an empty corner, the audiences imagination fills in the blanks and you create the meaning cinematically, observes Leonberg.I think horror works best when its relatable, Leonberg continues. I love Lassie, I love Air Bud, but it doesnt feel real, and thats part of the appeal of those films. But with Good Boy, making it real and relatable helps people recognize these quiet, personal, domestic moments with the dog. Hes not guided by abstract thought or things that a dog couldnt realistically doesides the obvious caveat of the supernatural.Then again, as much as Leonberg and Fischer insist that Indys an every day dog, he was bred for stardom. We named the dog Indiana, laughs Fischer, quoting Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Maybe Good Boy isnt just a movie that doesnt put the dog in danger. Maybe Good Boy is the movie that allows Indy to be the star he was always to be.