The director Ben Leonberg wants to make sure that when discussing the lead actor in “Good Boy,” there are quotes around the word “performance.”
“I cannot stress enough that he does not know he is in a movie,” Leonberg said in a recent video call.
That’s because the star of his horror movie is his dog, Indy, an 8-year-old retriever with reddish fur and a curious nose. To be clear, Indy is not just in the film, he is the undisputed main character of this story about a pooch whose ailing owner moves to a creepy family home in the woods. All the (living) human characters appear almost entirely in shadows. The audience sees the terror unfold entirely through Indy’s eyes as he senses a malevolent presence.
But Leonberg and his wife and producer, Kari Fischer, insisted that the production process was not scary for their pet. In fact, the trick of the movie is that through cinematography, sound design and other cinematic tools, Leonberg is projecting a performance onto Indy, a turn that won him the Howl of Fame award at the South by Southwest film festival.
“We were saying the title of the movie repeatedly during the production of the film,” Leonberg said.
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The post The Star of ‘Good Boy’ Didn’t Know He Was in a Horror Movie (He’s a Dog) appeared first on New York Times.
