Good One: Sometimes Less Is More. And Sometimes It’s a Lot More
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
Good One, a lesson in minimalist storytelling from first-time feature writer-director India Donaldson, is a movie that sneaks up on you.
Lily Collias stars as Sam, 17-year-old daughter of Chris (James Le Gros), joining him and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) on a hike in the woods. And not just any woods. Theirs is a three-day trek through a wilderness that is already two days’ drive from their comfortable lives in New York City.
It was meant to be two fathers and two offspring, but Matt’s son Dylan angrily backs out before they even get in the car. Sam, whose habit of noticing things and stating the obvious makes her a wise old sage in Matt’s eyes, remarks that the kid is probably just mad about his parents’ impending divorce. Chris, it should be noted, is already divorced.
Other than their marital status, the dads could not be more different. Chris is an uptight type A, carefully packing only what he needs to survive. Matt shows up in denim rather than hiking garb, brings a novel he won’t have time to read, and forgets his sleeping bag.
The movie plays with our perceptions and our expectations, of films and of life. When our trio happens upon a group of much younger all-male hikers who decide to set up their tents nearby, we’re primed for Something Bad to Happen.
Leaning into this fear, the trailer for Good One is cut and edited like it’s a horror flick. It isn’t, at least not in the traditional genre sense. The other campers turn out to be merely obsessed with hiking, and far more accomplished at it than Chris, who aggressively tries to one-up them, only to have them innocently, unselfconsciously trump his every outdoorsy boast.
Sam, meanwhile, finds herself navigating between these two older (did we mention divorced?) male egos, while occasionally sneaking into the woods to insert a tampon, in a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that she’s the only woman of note in the movie. As the story progresses, Matt leans more heavily on her, demanding wisdom and solace and pity, until she decides she’s had enough.
It’s clear when that line is crossed. The audience feels it. But Matt and Chris don’t seem to notice it at all. And therein lies Good One’s genius. As I said at the beginning, the ending sneaks up on you. And by the time the ending happens, you’ll realize it was all there at the beginning.
Good One. Directed by India Donaldson. Starring Lily Collias, James Le Gros, and Danny McCarthy. In theatres August 16 at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, and the Cineplex International Village in Vancouver; and August 23 in Victoria, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Edmonton.