{"id":188217,"date":"2025-10-09T14:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/188217\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T14:16:09","slug":"meet-indy-the-adorable-canine-star-of-this-creepy-horror-film-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/188217\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Indy, the adorable canine star of this creepy horror film \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good Boy <\/p>\n

\ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 <\/p>\n

Director: Ben Leonberg<\/p>\n

Cert: 15A<\/p>\n

Starring: Indy, Shane Jensen, Larry Fessenden<\/p>\n

Running Time: 1 hr 13 mins<\/p>\n

This excellent debut feature from Ben Leonberg may be unique among horror films in fairly attracting the compound adjectives \u201cdeeply unsettling\u201d and \u201cutterly adorable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first acknowledges an impressive ghost world that works threats of mortal illness in with stringy beings that ooze up from the underworld to smear us with foul-smelling tar. The latter derives from Leonberg\u2019s decision to tell his story from the perspective of a dog.<\/p>\n

What a dog this Indy is. You need a mutt with a slightly worried expression \u2013 no bouncing Jack Russell will do \u2013 and, with downturned brown eyes and occasionally hunched posture, the Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever meets the bill perfectly. <\/p>\n

Leonberg is cunning in his directorial choices. We are not exactly sharing Indy\u2019s point of view, but the camera remains at his level as he scurries around trying to make sense of obscure threats. The director never lets us see the human characters\u2019 faces, so prohibiting any unwanted identification. It is a clever conceit that, as such self-imposed restrictions often do, forces the film-makers to be endlessly creative.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A House of Dynamite review: Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s stressful film brings home perils of nuclear strikeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This is essentially a haunted-house story. After a cute intro that shows us footage of Indy \u2013 Leonberg\u2019s own dog in real life \u2013 being raised as best friend to Todd (Shane Jensen), we take ourselves to a grim pile in the uninviting countryside. Something is up with the human lead. We are never quite sure what, but it doesn\u2019t look as if the trip is going to him any good. The house, which belonged to his late grandfather, seems to throb with malign energies. Or so Indy suspects.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has been friendly with a dog will know that, with justification or not, they detect threats while humans remain blithely unworried. Leonberg makes a few references to unsettling odours by way of indicating that not everything Indy discerns comes from what he sees.<\/p>\n

Like too many horror films, Good Boy loses its way in the final chaos. But the growing sense of dread, enhanced by shadowy camera work and clattering sound design, is not easy to laugh off. Those who are understandably unnerved about such things can be reassured that no spirit does anything too wretched to the plucky canine star. A very good boy indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good Boy \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d9 \ue9d7 Director: Ben Leonberg Cert: 15A Starring: Indy, Shane Jensen, Larry Fessenden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,26579,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-188217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-for-you","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}