Author: fearinflight25

The September House: The Rules We Use to Survive

Spoilers for The September House novel by Carissa Orlando.

Fear in Flight Rating

🦇 Fear Rating: 🦇🦇🦇🦇 — Terrifying

Not because the ghosts kept me awake at night, but because the human horror underneath them is so disturbing.

🐾 Animal Safety: 🔴 Not Animal Safe

There are multiple animal deaths, particularly involving birds.

🩸 Gore: 🩸🩸 Heavy

Bleeding walls are only the beginning. The book contains domestic violence, some vivid and fairly graphic supernatural violence and injury.

👻 Horror Style:
🏚️ Haunted House
👻 Supernatural
🧠 Psychological Horror

There are haunted houses, and then there is the house in The September House.

Every September, the walls bleed. Ghosts wander through the rooms. Something deeply unpleasant lives in the basement. Margaret knows all of this.

She also knows the rules, and if she follows them, everything will be fine.

Probably.

That premise is what first made The September House such a wild, entertaining read. Margaret’s response to supernatural horror is almost aggressively practical. Strange noises? Expected. Blood running down the walls? Seasonal inconvenience. Ghosts? Some are more irritating than others.

There is something genuinely funny about watching a woman treat a violently haunted house like a difficult appliance she has learned to operate.

As the story progresses, Margaret’s fixation on rules becomes much darker and it’s clear the house is not the only frightening thing she has learned to live with.

If I Follow the Rules, I’ll Be Safe

Margaret believes in systems.

She knows which parts of the house are dangerous. She knows what happens in September. She knows which ghosts can be tolerated and which ones should be avoided.

Her rules give her a sense of control over something that should be completely uncontrollable.

For a while, they seem to work, which is what makes them so appealing.

There is a comfort in believing that life operates according to rules: if I do this, that will happen. If I avoid this, I can prevent that. If I behave correctly, I can stay safe.

Life doesn’t care about rules.

Neither does abuse.

Margaret’s relationship with her husband, Hal, gradually changes the way we understand almost everything about her. Her ability to accept the bizarre becomes less amusing when we realise how much she has already learned to normalise.

The supernatural horror is extreme.

The domestic horror is worse.

Margaret Is a Victim — And her daughter Katherine Is Too

This is where my feelings about the novel became complicated.

I liked Margaret and I wanted her to win.

I admired her stubbornness, her intelligence and her refusal to let the house drive her away.

And I also found myself becoming frustrated with her.

Margaret’s daughter grew up in the same household. She experienced the consequences of Hal’s violence too.

That matters.

It’s important to say clearly that Hal is responsible for Hal’s abuse and not Margaret.

One of the most damaging ideas surrounding domestic violence is the assumption that victims could simply make a different choice and solve the problem. Leaving an abusive relationship can be dangerous. Coercion, fear, financial dependence, threats and years of psychological manipulation can dramatically restrict someone’s choices.

Margaret should never be blamed for Hal choosing to hurt her.

Katherine’s experience cannot disappear however, simply because Margaret was also a victim.

A child living in a violent home is not an outside observer. They are living inside the fear, unpredictability and trauma too.

That is where The September House refuses to give us an easy answer.

Margaret can be both a loving mother and someone whose coping mechanisms failed to fully protect her daughter.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

When Survival Strategies Stop Working

Margaret’s rules make sense when viewed as survival strategies.

If she can learn Hal’s moods, perhaps she can prevent the next explosion.

If she can keep Katherine away at the right moment, perhaps she can protect her.

If she can understand the house, perhaps she can control it too.

The problem is that survival strategies are not the same thing as safety.

Someone may become extremely skilled at surviving an unsafe environment without ever actually making that environment safe.

That distinction may be the most disturbing idea in the entire novel.

Margaret’s rules give her structure. They allow her to continue functioning. They help her believe that catastrophe can be prevented if she remains careful enough.

They also encourage her to accept circumstances that should never have become normal.

The bleeding walls become manageable.

The ghosts become manageable.

Hal becomes manageable.

Until he isn’t.

The “Perfect Victim” Problem

I also appreciated that Margaret is not written as a perfectly behaved victim.

She makes choices that frustrated me.

She minimises things.

She rationalises.

She clings to explanations that are clearly falling apart.

I think that messiness is important.

There can be a strange expectation that victims of abuse must behave in exactly the way outsiders consider rational before they deserve complete sympathy.

They must leave at the right moment.

Recognise the danger immediately.

Make flawless decisions.

Protect everyone perfectly while living under circumstances specifically designed to undermine their ability to do exactly that.

Real people are rarely so neat.

Understanding Margaret does not require agreeing with every decision she makes.

Likewise, recognising the harm Katherine experienced does not require blaming Margaret for Hal’s violence.

There is room for both compassion and criticism.

That discomfort is part of what made the book stay with me.

The Real Horror of The September House

There are plenty of memorable supernatural moments in this novel.

It is creepy. It is bizarre. At times it is very funny. By the final stretch, it becomes gloriously chaotic.

The ghosts were not what disturbed me most.

The most frightening idea was how easily humans can adapt to circumstances that should be intolerable.

Margaret’s great strength is her ability to endure.

It is also one of her greatest vulnerabilities.

She can survive almost anything because she can convince herself that almost anything can become normal.

Just learn the rules.

Keep going.

Don’t look too closely at the blood running down the wall.

That resilience made me cheer her on.

It also made me want to shake her.

Perhaps that contradiction is exactly the point.

Final verdict: 4 bats out of 5 🦇🦇🦇🦇

The September House is a wildly entertaining haunted-house novel with much more going on beneath the floorboards than ghosts.

The supernatural horror is fun.

The human horror is much harder to shake.

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The X-Files Revisited: “Squeeze”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Overall Rating

Fear Rating: 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇 Nightmare Fuel

Animal Safety: 🟢 Animal Safe. No animals were present.

Gore: 🩸 Moderate
The violence is more disturbing than graphic, with body horror and organ removal central to the threat.

Horror Style:
🧠 Psychological Horror • 💀 Body Horror • 👽 Science Fiction Horror • 🕵️ Mystery Horror • 🐺 Creature Feature

The Horror Inside the Walls

Before alien conspiracies swallowed the cultural imagination, before black oil and sprawling mythology arcs, The X-Files gave us something smaller, stranger, and far more personal:

A man who could fold himself into the dark.

“Squeeze” remains one of the series’ most effective early episodes because it understands that horror does not need spectacle. It needs proximity.

It needs a ceiling vent.

A narrow crawl space.

A shadow where no human body should fit.

And waiting inside those spaces is Eugene Victor Tooms, one of television’s quietest and most disturbing monsters.

Why The X-Files Belongs in Horror

The X-Files is often described as science fiction, but many of its most enduring episodes are built from pure horror.

Strip away the alien mythology and what remains are stories about invasive bodies, predators hiding in plain sight, institutional hesitation, and the frightening fragility of safety.

The best episodes do not depend on futuristic spectacle. They rely on atmosphere, silence, restraint, and the deeply unsettling possibility that the monstrous may look disturbingly human.

In this series, I’m revisiting my favourite episodes not simply as 1990s nostalgia, but as atmospheric horror: examining how they create dread, what their monsters represent, and how Dana Scully’s quiet authority anchors the chaos around her.

“Squeeze” is the perfect place to begin.

The Horror Is Architectural

Tooms emerges every thirty years.

He selects five victims.

He removes their livers to sustain himself.

Then he disappears again.

His mutation allows him to elongate his body, compress his bones, and slide through spaces no human should be able to enter: vents, chimneys, shafts and crawl spaces.

The horror is not merely physical.

It is architectural.

“Squeeze” turns the structures around us into accomplices. Walls no longer protect. Ceilings no longer contain. The narrow spaces designed to remain unseen become pathways for the predator.

You are not afraid of being chased through the street.

You are afraid of discovering that your home was never sealed.

The episode weaponises the ordinary spaces above and around us. Every vent becomes an opening. Every shadowed corner suggests movement. Privacy itself begins to feel permeable.

That is what lingers after the credits.

Not the attack.

The waiting.

The Predator Who Blends In

Tooms looks almost ordinary.

That matters.

He moves through public spaces unnoticed. He works among other people. He occupies the same offices, streets and buildings as his victims. There is no dramatic disguise because he does not need one.

He is not alien.

He is not mythic.

He is a predator concealed within the everyday.

His stillness makes him more unsettling. He watches without urgency because time is on his side. His violence is ritualised, patient and frighteningly practical.

The episode understands that horror intensifies when it removes distance. A creature from another world can be observed as something foreign.

Tooms is already here.

Scully’s Quiet Authority

What elevates “Squeeze” beyond creature horror is Dana Scully.

Her bravery is not loud, reckless or theatrical.

It is steady.

She does not blindly accept Mulder’s theory, but neither does she dismiss it through ridicule. She examines grotesque evidence without flinching. She questions, observes and continues gathering facts even when the facts begin to resist ordinary explanation.

While bodies bend unnaturally and ceilings become entry points, Scully remains grounded.

Her authority comes from knowledge, preparation and composure. She allows reason to guide her without using scepticism as a shield against reality.

That distinction is important.

Scully does not refuse the impossible because it frightens her.

She asks the impossible to prove itself.

✧ Feminine Strength in Horror: Holding the Centre

In “Squeeze,” physical boundaries collapse.

Private spaces are invaded.

Biology stretches beyond recognition.

Institutions hesitate because the evidence does not fit comfortably inside what they already believe.

Scully’s strength lies in her refusal to become destabilised by that uncertainty. While others react to the grotesque, she evaluates it. While the structure around her becomes unsafe, she remains internally secure.

Her composure does not make her emotionless. It makes her difficult to manipulate.

In a story about a predator who enters through hidden openings, Scully becomes the episode’s true defence.

The monster moves through walls.

Scully holds the centre.

That is quiet authority.

Why “Squeeze” Endures

“Squeeze” works because it is simple.

No elaborate mythology.

No excessive exposition.

No need to explain every mystery.

Just atmosphere, restraint and the deeply unsettling idea that the threat may already be inside the structure.

More than thirty years later, Eugene Tooms remains disturbing because the episode found a fear that does not age: the possibility that the places designed to protect us may contain their own hidden points of entry.

The most effective monsters are not always cosmic.

Sometimes they are patient.

Sometimes they wait in the dark.

And sometimes the only stable element in the frame is the woman who refuses to be shaken by them.

Final Thoughts

“Squeeze” proves that The X-Files could do horror not as an accessory to science fiction, but as a genre in its own right.

It reminds us that the scariest monsters are not always cosmic or spectacular.

Sometimes they are quiet.

Sometimes they are patient.

Sometimes they are already inside the walls.

Next in The X-Files Revisited: isolation, infection and the breakdown of trust in “Ice.”

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Author Spotlight: T. Kingfisher

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Overall rating

🦇🦇🦇 Disturbing


🔴 Not Animal Safe 👻 Spooky Witness ⚠️ Pet Peril

🩸🩸 Moderate and🩸🩸🩸 Heavy for Wolf Worm

👻 Supernatural, 🌲 Folk Horror, 📖 Gothic Horror

While I admire T. Kingfisher’s strong characters, friendships, and unsettling supernatural scenarios, readers concerned about animal harm should approach these stories with caution.

Some horror authors terrify readers with violence.

Others terrify us with ideas.

T. Kingfisher belongs firmly in the second category.

Her stories often begin with ordinary people living ordinary lives… until something deeply wrong creeps into the edges of their world.

A strange hole in a museum wall.
A forgotten path in the woods.
A whisper from somewhere that shouldn’t exist.
A scientific project that should never have gone beyond the page.

Before long, the characters — and the reader — realise they have stumbled into something ancient, unsettling, and impossible to explain.

And somehow, it is both terrifying and oddly comforting at the same time.

A Master of Modern Folk Horror

Kingfisher’s horror frequently draws on folk horror, gothic horror and cosmic horror traditions, but she adds something many writers forget:

Warmth and humour.

Her protagonists are not hardened investigators or fearless heroes. Instead, they are often practical, slightly sarcastic adults who find themselves confronting the uncanny whether they like it or not.

This grounded perspective makes the horror feel even more believable.

When something impossible appears, the characters react the way real people might:

“This is horrifying… but I guess we should investigate.”

The Hollow Places – One of My Favourite Horror Novels

The Hollow Places is one of my favourite horror books in recent years.

The story follows Kara, who returns to her uncle’s unusual roadside museum after her life unexpectedly falls apart. While exploring the building, she discovers a hole in the wall that leads somewhere impossible.

On the other side lies a strange landscape that feels wrong, silent, vast, and deeply hostile to human beings.

The tension builds slowly as Kara and her friend Simon realise that the place they have discovered should not exist — and it may not want them to leave.

What makes the novel particularly memorable isn’t just the unsettling setting.

It’s the characters.

Kara and Simon feel like real people navigating something far beyond their understanding, balancing fear with humour in a way that feels genuinely human.

The result is a story that is deeply unsettling while still being surprisingly companionable to read.

The Twisted Ones – Folk Horror at Its Best

The Twisted Ones leans even further into folk horror.

When Mouse agrees to clean out her late grandmother’s rural home, she expects clutter and old belongings.

What she doesn’t expect is a journal describing strange creatures that live in the surrounding woods.

Creatures that may still be there.

As Mouse begins exploring the forest around the house, she slowly realises that something ancient may be watching from just beyond the trees.

And the woods are not as empty as they seem.

The novel captures the unsettling feeling that something is always just out of sight, quietly observing.

I also appreciated the diverse supporting characters in The Twisted Ones, including people of colour who feel capable, intelligent and important to the story rather than simply existing in the background.

Wolf Worm – Gothic Horror with Too Many Legs

Wolf Worm adds a different flavour to Kingfisher’s horror: historical gothic, scientific obsession, and insects.

So many insects.

Set in 1899, the novel follows Sonia Wilson, a scientific illustrator who takes work with an entomologist in North Carolina. Sonia is a strong main character: brave, observant, and focused on her career in a way that makes her feel quite modern, despite the historical setting.

I enjoyed that aspect of her character. Sonia is not simply waiting for life to happen to her. She is trying to build a future for herself in a world that gives women very limited room to do that.

The horror itself is vivid and often deeply uncomfortable. Kingfisher has a gift for making nature feel strange, invasive and wrong, and Wolf Worm takes that unease in an especially bug-heavy direction. As someone who lives in Australia and already feels personally terrorised by insects every summer, this was not exactly a relaxing reading experience.

The gore is also stronger here than in The Hollow Places or The Twisted Ones. My mind is very visual, so some scenes were difficult to shake off.

For Fear in Flight readers, this is also one to approach with caution if animal harm is a concern. There is harm to small animals, including rabbits, which I found sad and upsetting. The Kent family’s dog, however, has a memorable role and unknowingly helps Miss Wilson, which added a small but welcome animal-safe moment in an otherwise very unsettling story.

One thing that frustrated me was Sonia’s decision to ignore what she saw in the shed. It made sense that she was constrained by the expectations of the time, and worried about how others would react, but as a reader I wanted her to trust herself sooner. Still, that tension also reflects one of Kingfisher’s recurring strengths: her characters often make imperfect, human decisions under pressure.

And sometimes the scariest part is watching someone realise that their instincts were right all along.

Representation and Strong Friendships

Another element I appreciate in Kingfisher’s horror is the way her stories highlight friendship and community.

Many horror stories focus heavily on isolation, but Kingfisher often allows her characters to confront the unknown together.

In The Hollow Places, the friendship between Kara and Simon is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Simon provides positive LGBTQIA+ representation, and while the portrayal leans slightly toward familiar stereotypes, it still feels warm, supportive and respectful.

Their friendship brings humour and humanity to a story that explores some deeply unsettling ideas.

What stands out most is that Kingfisher’s characters are not defined solely by identity markers. Instead, they feel like real people navigating increasingly strange and dangerous situations together.

In stories filled with cosmic dread, strange woods, impossible landscapes and suspiciously active insect collections, these relationships provide an emotional anchor for the reader.

Why T. Kingfisher’s Horror Works

What makes Kingfisher stand out in modern horror is the balance she strikes between supernatural terror and emotional warmth.

Across The Hollow Places, The Twisted Ones and Wolf Worm, her stories often combine:

cosmic dread
folk horror
gothic atmosphere
personal tragedy
strong friendships
dry humour
likeable characters you want to win

Her characters are rarely blank victims wandering into danger. They have histories, grief, frustrations, responsibilities and relationships. They are funny, flawed and practical, which makes them feel human even when the world around them becomes impossible.

That emotional grounding matters. The strange doorway, the watching woods and the insect horror are frightening on their own, but they become more powerful because Kingfisher gives us characters worth caring about.

The horror creeps in slowly — and once it arrives, it tends to linger long after the final page.

Final Thoughts

Horror doesn’t always need relentless darkness to be effective.

Sometimes the most unsettling stories are the ones that balance dread with humour, warmth and believable characters.

That’s exactly what T. Kingfisher achieves across The Hollow Places, The Twisted Ones and Wolf Worm.

Her characters feel like people you might genuinely know: practical, slightly sarcastic, flawed, and doing their best to survive situations no one could ever truly be prepared for. The strong friendships, thoughtful representation and moments of humour give the stories emotional depth, which ultimately makes the creeping horror even more effective.

For me, The Hollow Places remains the standout. The eerie landscapes, the sense that something vast and wrong is lurking just out of sight, and the believable friendship between Kara and Simon combine to create a story that lingers long after the final page.

Wolf Worm was more grotesque and bug-heavy than my personal comfort zone, but it also confirmed Kingfisher’s skill at creating vivid, unsettling scenarios with memorable protagonists.

If you enjoy horror that blends cosmic unease, folklore, gothic atmosphere, humour and strong character relationships, T. Kingfisher is absolutely an author worth exploring.

Just be prepared to think twice the next time you see a strange doorway, a quiet forest path, a hole in the wall that shouldn’t be there…

Or far too many bugs.

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It: Welcome to Derry — Fear as Inherited Violence

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Overall Rating

🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇 Nightmare Fuel
🟢 Animal Safe
🩸 Heavy
👻 Supernatural, 🧠 Psychological Horror, 💀 Body Horror, 📖 Gothic Horror

Content notes: Racism, historical erasure, child endangerment, graphic violence, institutional cruelty, inherited trauma.

It: Welcome to Derry is less interested in spectacle than in cruelty, and that is where the series finds its power.

The visual effects are often effective: shadow-heavy, dense, and disorienting in a way that makes Derry feel less like a town than a wound that keeps reopening. Not every set piece lands with the same force. The graveyard sequence, for example, feels comparatively restrained beside the show’s more psychologically oppressive moments. But Welcome to Derry is at its strongest when it moves away from spectacle and into something more intimate and deliberate.

Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise remains central to that horror, but this version feels less theatrical and more vicious. He does not simply frighten people; he conditions them. His cruelty is prolonged, targeted, and almost instructional, reinforcing Stephen King’s idea of Pennywise not as an intruder, but as something embedded in Derry itself. Fear here is not an interruption of daily life. It is part of the town’s structure.

That is where the series becomes most unsettling. Welcome to Derry links its horror to racism, historical erasure, and communal complicity. Violence is not only personal; it is cultural. The removal of the totems and the deliberate act of burning operate as both literal and symbolic erasure: attempts to destroy memory, sever lineage, and rewrite history in service of the dominant narrative. Pennywise may be the monster in the shadows, but he is sustained by a community willing to forget, deny, and look away.

Producer Barbara Muschietti’s influence is felt in this emphasis on character-driven horror and moral consequence. The series understands that King’s most enduring monsters are rarely isolated from the worlds around them. They are enabled by silence, cruelty, prejudice, and institutions that protect themselves before they protect the vulnerable. In Welcome to Derry, horror is inseparable from social context.

The violence is intense and often graphic, but the gore rarely feels empty. It works as an extension of the show’s broader ideas about cycles of harm and inherited trauma. Derry is a place where suffering repeats because too many people have agreed, explicitly or otherwise, not to interrupt it. Notably, the series avoids harm to animals, keeping its focus on human vulnerability, institutional failure, and moral collapse.

Ultimately, Welcome to Derry succeeds not by escalating scale, but by escalating cruelty. It offers one of the more unsettling entries in the It canon because it understands evil not only as something supernatural, but as something cultivated, protected, and passed down.

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Obsession (2026) Review

★★★★☆ (4/5)

🦇🦇🦇 🦇 Terrifying

🩸🩸🩸Extreme

🔴 Not Animal Safe – Significant animal harm, cruelty or death.

💀 Body Horror

🧠 Psychological Horror

Some horror films flirt with uncomfortable ideas before retreating to safer ground. Obsession does the opposite. It introduces an unsettling premise, commits to it without hesitation, and follows it to a conclusion that left me genuinely stunned. For a horror fan who can often predict where a story is heading, that is a rare achievement.

At the heart of the film is an outstanding performance from Inde Navarrette, who carries the emotional weight of increasingly surreal and terrifying events. Her physical performance is particularly remarkable. Horror often relies on makeup, effects or sudden shocks to unsettle an audience, but Obsession understands that movement itself can become frightening. The way bodies move, pause and occupy space creates an uncanny atmosphere that lingers long after the credits roll.

The film also balances genuine dread with moments of wonderfully absurd humour. One memorable supporting character delivers supernatural guidance with the weary efficiency of someone helping a customer return a faulty toaster rather than confronting unimaginable horror. That strange blend of the mundane and the terrifying gives the film a distinct personality.

One of the aspects I found most compelling is that Obsession refuses to soften the implications of its own premise. Where some contemporary horror films hesitate just as they approach their darkest ideas, writer-director Curry Barker pushes forward. The result is a film that respects its audience enough to let them sit with discomfort rather than offering easy reassurance.

There are, however, a few elements that prevented this from becoming a perfect score. Bear is a frustratingly passive protagonist whose decisions become increasingly difficult to defend, while one key relationship never felt entirely convincing. Those issues never derail the film, but they occasionally weakened my emotional investment.

One possible reading of Obsession is as a form of incel horror—not because it centres online ideology, but because it explores the dangers of entitlement, obsession and the refusal to accept another person’s autonomy. Yet the film is equally interested in identity, agency and the terrifying possibility of becoming trapped within your own existence. It leaves enough ambiguity for audiences to draw their own conclusions, which only makes it more rewarding to discuss afterwards.

I also have to acknowledge the animal content. As readers of Fear in Flight know, animal welfare matters to me, and the film includes the off-screen death of a cat. While the harm itself is not shown, the scene—and later imagery connected to it—was distressing enough that it cost the film one star.

Even so, Obsession is one of the year’s most memorable horror films. It surprised me, unsettled me, made me laugh in places I never expected, and delivered an ending I genuinely did not see coming. That combination is increasingly rare.

I suspect this will remain in my top five horror films of the year.

Fear in Flight Rating: ★★★★☆

Animal Safety Guide

⚠️ Contains the off-screen death of a cat and later imagery involving its remains. Viewers sensitive to animal harm should be aware before watching.

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Good Boy (2025): Trauma, Loyalty, and the Horror of Home

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Overall Rating

🦇🦇🦇 Fear Factor

🩸 Low Gore

🐶 Hero Dog
👻 Spooky Witness
⚠️ Pet Peril

🐾 Animal-Safe Badge Awarded

Good Boy (2025) is a slow-burn horror film that understands fear as something lived rather than witnessed. Told largely through the perspective of a dog, the film transforms domestic space into a site of emotional unease, where inherited trauma lingers in silence and routine. For Fear in Flight, a platform drawn to atmosphere-driven and ethically attentive horror, Good Boy stands out as a meditation on loyalty, family wounds, and the unsettling intimacy of home.

At the centre of the film is Indy, whose performance grounds the story in instinct and emotional awareness. Without dialogue or overt emotional cues, Indy communicates through behaviour—alert stillness, hesitation, protective closeness. The film wisely avoids anthropomorphising him, instead allowing the audience to interpret meaning the same way dog owners do in real life. Through Indy, viewers are aligned with a consciousness that feels everything but understands very little, heightening the film’s sense of unease. This perspective is further contextualised by the involvement of producer Kari Fischer, who is also Indy’s owner—an ethical reassurance that lends weight to the film’s animal-centred approach.

The house itself functions as a central metaphor for family trauma. Narrow hallways, locked doors, and dimly lit rooms suggest emotional containment rather than safety. The past is not explained through exposition but embedded into the environment. Sounds carry weight; silence feels loaded. The house becomes an echo chamber for unresolved pain, shaping behaviour and emotional responses even in moments of apparent calm. In classic domestic horror fashion, familiarity becomes a trap rather than a comfort.

One of the film’s most resonant elements is its portrayal of the bond between dogs and their human companions. Good Boy recognises that dogs are deeply attuned to the emotional temperature of a household. As a dog owner, this depiction feels especially truthful. Dogs sense tension, fear, and instability long before it is acknowledged aloud. Indy’s loyalty is not sentimentalised or heroic; it is instinctive and constant, even when something feels deeply wrong. The film quietly acknowledges that animals are not passive observers of human dysfunction—they live inside it with us.

That bond is tested uncomfortably in moments of neglect, particularly when Indy is chained outside in the rain. This scene is difficult to watch, and intentionally so. Rather than feeling gratuitous, it reinforces the film’s broader themes of emotional abandonment and control. The decision to isolate Indy physically mirrors the emotional isolation present within the household itself. For animal-aware viewers, the moment introduces ethical discomfort, exposing how trauma and neglect often manifest through everyday decisions rather than overt cruelty. Indy’s quiet endurance in this moment underscores the vulnerability of animals within human systems of power and dependence.

Final Thoughts

Atmosphere is where Good Boy truly excels. The film relies on restraint rather than spectacle, allowing dread to accumulate gradually. Long takes linger just long enough to become uncomfortable, shadows feel deliberate, and the sound design prioritises absence over excess. This slow-burn approach mirrors the nature of generational trauma itself—rarely explosive, rarely resolved, but persistently present, shaping experience over time.

Ultimately, Good Boy (2025) is a domestic horror film that understands fear as an emotional inheritance. By filtering its story through a dog’s perspective, it exposes the unseen ways trauma permeates the home, affecting even those who cannot name or escape it. Indy’s remarkable performance, the symbolic weight of the house, and the film’s quietly devastating atmosphere combine to create a horror experience that lingers. For Fear in Flight, Good Boy is horror at its most personal —not about monsters that invade the home, but about what has always lived there, and who remains loyal enough to feel it.

🐾 Animal Safety Guide

Good Boy is a dog-centred horror film that places animal perception and vulnerability at the heart of its narrative.

  • No graphic animal violence is shown
  • Emotional distress and neglect are present
  • A dog is chained outside in the rain (non-graphic, but emotionally confronting)
  • Animal fear is implied through behaviour and atmosphere rather than harm
  • The film treats animal suffering as meaningful, not exploitative
  • Animal-sensitive viewers may find certain moments upsetting due to the emotional weight placed on neglect and isolation, even though the film avoids sensationalised cruelty.

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Welcome to Fear in Flight

Every horror fan remembers the story that drew them into the darkness.

For some, it was a dog-eared Stephen King novel borrowed from a library. For others, it was a late-night creature feature, a ghost story told around a campfire, or a television series that proved monsters could be just as fascinating as heroes.

For me, horror has always been about more than fear.

The best horror stories ask difficult questions. They explore grief, isolation, survival, identity, obsession and the unknown. Long after the monsters disappear, it’s these ideas that continue to haunt us.

That’s why I created Fear in Flight.

This website is dedicated to thoughtful horror reviews, essays and recommendations covering books, films and television. You’ll find everything from classic gothic fiction to modern psychological horror, creature features, science fiction horror and Australian horror.

Along the way, I’ll compare books with their screen adaptations, explore recurring themes within the genre, and celebrate the writers and filmmakers who continue to redefine what horror can be.

One feature that’s particularly close to my heart is the Animal Safety Guide. As an animal lover, I know many readers and viewers appreciate knowing whether beloved pets make it safely through a story. You’ll also discover a few unique Fear in Flight tags—including Hero Dog, Final Cat, and Spooky Witness—celebrating the unforgettable animal companions that so often steal the show.

Whether you’re searching for your next terrifying read, deciding if a film is worth your time, or simply looking for a place where horror is discussed with curiosity and respect, I hope you’ll feel at home here.

Thank you for stopping by at the very beginning of this journey.

Turn down the lights.

Keep an eye on the shadows.

And welcome to Fear in Flight.

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