SCREEN | Camping Out – 'Good One' Unpacks Family Drama

"Do you want me to try?"

Metrograph Pictures / LevelFilm

Good One, first-time writer/director India Donaldson's gripping debut feature film, unpacks a quietly harrowing father/daughter indie drama set on a tense backpacking camping trip in the Catskills alongside the parent's troublesome best friend. It balances a complex lead performance by transfixing newcomer Lily Collias, who is sensational, with an effortless sense of discomfort of transitional power to engage viewers.

Veteran character actor James Le Gros and Collias give measured performances as a loving but uptight divorced father and queer seventeen-year-old daughter pairing. Portraying a washed-up, small-time actor, Danny McCarthy as his loudmouthed buddy without a filter, whose son turns down what's supposed to be a foursome, pitches a balanced performance of the aggrieved but otherwise well-meaning middle-aged white man dealing with his relevance slipping away.

As a disarmingly modest but tender character study, Good One avoids any usual dramatic trapping in favour of a sensitive portrait of a young woman navigating spaces where the power is firmly against her surrounded by older men. There's a dreadful sense of tension between the characters despite a clear lack of real danger or ulterior motives reminiscent of real life where young women are forced to learn how to non-threateningly assert their power smartly without engaging in conflict in the woods of upstate New York.


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