’Good One’ review: India Donaldson delivers an emotional debut

Lily Collias delivers a tremendously moving performance in Good One which highlights what happens when kids learn of their parent’s flaws.

In Good One, the biting and introspective feature debut from director India Donaldson, parents’ missteps come to life with bruising honesty. Rendered with subtlety and significant moments of barely masked vulnerability from the lead character, the film aches with the minutiae of betrayal. In Donaldson’s film, which she also writes, she poses the question of what weight young women carry when told they’re the “responsible one” — when they’re, ultimately, parentified.

Lily Collias stars as the 17-year-old Sam. She’s going on a trip with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros), and his longest — if not best — friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy.) Initially, the plan for the hike through the Catskills was for Matt’s son to accompany them before he drops out in a bout of teenage angst. Now, it’s just Sam and these two men as she observes their latent aggressions towards one another, their chest puffing egos, and the laziness that guides them. There’s a reason why Sam is the one cleaning up behind them as they continue their hike.

For a while, it seems Good One will solely focus on the relationship between Chris and Matt, as shown through Sam’s gaze. She listens to them say how smart she is before being privy to innocuously damning conversations. Chris says at one point that men only truly reach maturity when they have a family — something untrue as we watch his traipse through the wilderness. Matt talks of being able to feel his ex-wife’s labor pains, a truly fundamentally asinine statement. It’s his desire to be someone of worth and his deep well of insecurity speaking.

Sam’s laborious travels are woven expertly into Donaldson’s script. Collia’s intuitive performance helps carry it, giving way to Sam’s innermost vulnerabilities while maintaining a steely, observant edge. Sam understands she’s seen as the “good one” and upholds the image. Even if the real her cries out for protection.

As we traverse this path with Sam, her pack loaded and only growing heavier with the weight of the men she drags, the story contorts into something far more sinister. For some, there’s a note of tension from the start. A distrust in the men she travels with and their blustering nature. But even still, by the time she’s let down not once but twice, it’s a brutal realization, heavy in the inevitable. Collias is superb in these moments as the camera holds tight to her face, haunted and so very young despite her supposed wisdom.

Sam is on her period throughout, and it adds another weight to her journey, one that only she understands. That weight is such a pivotal piece of Good One as she silently deals with it while her father and his friend get to take up space. She, meanwhile, must fulfill the dutiful daughter role rather than be anything that teeters towards combatant. This aspect speaks to many children who hear they were mature for their age or wise beyond their years, often by other adults who should know better. There’s always a reason why, and it’s usually never the child’s choice.

Donaldson shoots all of this with a careful, guided hand that captures the wilderness they’re in. It’s both expansive and isolating, claustrophobic in how it traps Sam. The natural lighting is beautiful, with the travel feeling real and damply trodden. Donaldson, along with cinematographer Wilson Cameron, executes a tone that paints the picture of Sam’s current emotional duress as she lies suspended in time as these two men play within the shallow well of toxic masculinity.

Sam’s story contrasts with Chris and Matt’s, whose friendship seems more borne from loyal obligation than actual affection. Chris spends most of the film ribbing Matt for all of his inadequacies, lobbing little, mounting criticisms as Matt meanwhile simply tries to fill the silence with chatter. Neither are who they thought they would be, and both Le Gros and McCarthy shoulder these truths even as the characters run from them. And while there’s plenty of interiority to their stories, Sam pulls us along, and Collias anchors us in her story.

Perhaps that’s why the inevitability of her disappointment stings with such vicious clarity. Because even if the film begins with playfulness as she lays in bed with a would-be something more, a friend who she flirtatiously texts throughout the film, it’s wrought with something melancholy. But the film is hopeful in that in knows Sam can escape the toxicity these two men provide. She shoulder’s the weight at the film’s start, but it can and will be cut.

Good One is out now in select theaters.

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Images credited to Metrograph Pictures