‘Good One’ movie review: Lily Collias is mesmerising in India Donaldson’s beautiful forest of fault lines

India Donaldson’s Good One slips in and stays with you longer than you expect. This whisper of a film is about a weekend camping trip with a teenage girl, her dad, and his best friend. There are long hikes, awkward silences, and not much in the way of big drama. But something more significant is taking shape as this young woman starts to see herself, and the invisible efforts she’s been making just to keep everything from falling apart.

At 17, Sam (an outstanding Lily Collias) is accustomed to being the responsible one. The “good one,” as the title suggests. She’s the kind of daughter who agrees to a weekend in the woods with her divorced father and his oldest friend out of a sense of duty devoid of enthusiasm.

The three-day hike with her father Chris (James Le Gros) and his best friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) is rendered with the meticulous quietude of a short story, with each gesture and half-smile freighted with implication. As the trees thicken and the trail unfolds, so too does the realisation that there may just be a reckoning to this getaway.

Donaldson’s writing is deceptively simple. She doesn’t rush toward plot or punctuate emotion with catharsis. The drama unfolds in sidelong glances and subtly shifting dynamics among the trio. Chris loves his daughter but struggles to see her as separate from himself. The disarmingly affable Matt, crosses a line so quietly you almost miss it. That Sam doesn’t speaks volumes.

A still from ‘Good One’
| Photo Credit:
Metrograph Pictures

Wilson Cameron’s cinematography is suffused with natural light and the hush of a world untouched by cell service. The camera often lingers on Sam — half in profile, barely reacting — as if waiting for her interior to surface, and Collias delivers on that trust. The role affords her no speeches or dramatic breakdowns, but she manages to express a torrent of unspoken emotion with the slightest tightening of her jaw or flicker in her eyes.

In many ways, Good One recalls the gentle slow-burn of Kelly Reichardt, who has always understood how silence can be just as expressive as dialogue, and that nature can be both sanctuary and crucible. But Donaldson’s voice is distinctly her own, and is unafraid to sit with discomfort. She draws complex emotional maps without ever reaching for melodrama, trusting us to navigate the terrain.

The film is also beautifully attuned to gendered dynamics in how young women like Sam are expected to be pleasant, useful and emotionally fluent. She cooks for the men, listens to their confessions, and absorbs their anxieties, only to be unsettlingly reminded that her own boundaries are up for negotiation. And yet, Good One never flattens its men into villains. Chris and Matt are sympathetic, even pitiable, but their casual negligence stings all the more for its crushing familiarity.

A still from ‘Good One’
| Photo Credit:
Metrograph Pictures

The tension is unmistakable, and grows in the small, easy-to-miss moments: when Chris treats Sam like his assistant, makes her sleep on the floor, or doesn’t clock the shift in Matt’s tone. These are not unforgivable acts, but that’s what makes them so devastating. Donaldson’s film is a study in how the people closest to us can overlook the simplest truths; and how young people often shrink themselves to make that oversight easier to live with.

The generational divide here is in the empathy, responsibility, and the emotional labour one side doesn’t even realise the other is doing. Chris and Matt ramble about regrets and careers and old friendships, but they speak as if Sam isn’t fully in the room. The weight of being the “good one” hangs over every scene.

At just under 90 minutes, Good One doesn’t ask for much, but it gives back more than most films twice its length.

Good One is currently available to rent or purchase on BookMyShow Stream.