‘Good One’ Ending and Twist Explained by Director India Donaldson

Spoiler alert: This interview contains spoilers for “Good One,” in theaters now.

“Good One” is a comedy-drama film directed by India Donaldson, a director who is making her directorial debut. The film revolves around three people on a hiking trip. But suddenly, it is not the same.

In her second film role, Lily Koulias plays 17-year-old Sam, who goes camping with her father Chris (James Le Gros) and his goofy friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). After her father goes to bed, Sam has a candid conversation with Matt, who is going through a divorce, in a 13-minute campfire scene that ends with Matt suggesting Sam come over to his tent to warm it up.

It's a disturbing, deceptive moment in the film, a moment of profound betrayal that paints a quiet, world-shattering revelation on Kollias's face. What follows is an exploration of familial trust, flawed parents, and the limits of tolerance.

Following “Good One’s” premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Metrograph Pictures has taken on the film as its first acquisition, with New York theaters expanding distribution. The film is set to open in Los Angeles and New York theaters on August 9, with a wide release slated for the following weeks.

“People talk about seeing blockbusters in theaters, but I kind of feel the opposite,” Donaldson says. “You can’t really experience the peace and quiet of an intimate movie unless you’re in a theater.”

Donaldson spoke with diverse Ahead of the theatrical release of “Good One” to discuss the process of making an independent film in elements and analyze a pivotal scene in it.

What was the hardest part about making your first film besides getting financing?

Well… I'm like, “Obviously it's money.” Well, money is about getting people to trust you, and when you've never made a feature film before, it's very hard to get people to trust you. It's also hard for me to trust myself. I've had a lot of moments of self-doubt along the way. To make a film, you have to keep moving forward and shut that voice out. For me, being vigilant about shutting that voice out was the hardest part.

“Good One” is about a defining moment between a teenage girl and her father's friend. Did the idea for the film start from that moment?

It's hard to pinpoint the first nucleus. The way ideas form in my head is there's a swirl of things, and then the ideas settle together in clusters. I was interested in a personality designed to please others and act in the service of others. I was interested in a teenager [protagonist]I was interested in a subtle moment where the audience is betrayed by a character they have come to trust.

I imagine this is the kind of movie where you have no idea how well it's going to work when you write the script. Because of the nature of the story, the movie relies heavily on performances, capturing the subtle moments on the characters' faces.

I always knew that the success of the film hinged on casting the right people. That was my gut feeling, my instinct about who they were and how they would work with me. And we were narrowing it down as we went along, and part of that was the dialogue and how the actors interpreted the characters. You discover things along the way once these amazing actors become the characters. The scene where Sam confronts her father, when I go back to the script, there’s a lot more dialogue than what ended up in the film. It was a much longer scene. I learned to leave out things that I felt were important in the writing process and then they were completely irrelevant once I saw them on camera.

What was it like filming this scene in practice?

James Le Gros was looking at the script and suddenly suggested that some of the dialogue wasn’t necessary. Even more dialogue was cut out in the editing, but he said, “Let’s have a nice day,” and he said, “That’s the whole scene.” He was absolutely right. Apart from what she was saying to him, that was the most important moment, and it immediately illuminated for me how insignificant some of the more direct things he was saying were.

While these two films have little in common, “Good One” reminded me of Peacock’s comedy “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain.” Both films take place almost entirely outdoors, and both focus on three people hiking. When I interviewed Paul Briganti.The director of “Misty Mountain” said that filming in nature presented many unexpected challenges, and that he had to deal with wasp nests, ticks, snakes and hot weather. Did you face similar obstacles?

Paul and I needed to form a support group for people who shot outdoors. There was always the threat of something happening that would disrupt the tight schedule. We had no room to maneuver. The actors were going to go on strike the day after we finished shooting. We couldn’t afford to miss a day because of the weather. One day, a thunderstorm rolled in and we couldn’t shoot. We shot what we could inside tents on the porch of the Airbnb where we were staying. We did our best to move forward at all costs, but I knew we had to adapt to whatever happened, and I just hoped it wouldn’t be something so massive that we had to cancel. A little rain, a little thunderstorm, a little bear sighting, we could adapt in ways that narrowed our focus and made the process more specific. Well, it rained. The scene would be wet, and that gave it a kind of damp, sad quality that I now think was absolutely essential to the tone.

The film’s plot takes a turn when Matt, trying to get closer to Sam after her father goes to bed, invites his friend’s teenage daughter into his tent to keep him warm. How did she manage to capture this delicate moment? A less confident filmmaker might have made the transgression more extreme.

I just go with what I find satisfying. A more subtle moment allows you to see more complexity. A more simple, quiet moment allows you to reveal more layers and perspectives, where a more aggressive tone would have flattened the complexity or made Matt a one-dimensional, evil character. I adore this character. Regardless of how the audience feels about him, I empathize with him. Part of the reason this scene happens so late in the film is because I want to give the audience the opportunity to know him and trust him, and to feel disappointed in him in the way that Sam might feel.

After the abuse happened, did you feel a responsibility as a filmmaker to maintain a sense of empathy for Matt?

My sympathy for Matt, and the way I portrayed his presence in the last third of the film, is that we're saying goodbye to him. He's been thrown out of the story in a way, but he's really been thrown out of himself. He's made himself smaller and more invisible, which ties into his shame and all the feelings that follow.

Then there’s the film’s biggest betrayal, which is Sam’s father’s indifference, or unwillingness, to confront Matt. This suggests that the character is avoiding conflict, but does it also point to a broader idea that men tend to side with other men in such situations?

There’s a kind of universality to the dynamics of the story that you expand. For me, I just live in the specificity of these characters and this relationship. Thank you for saying that’s the biggest betrayal, because it’s for me too. That moment when you realize, “Oh, my father is a flawed human being, in this moment, he’s denying or he can’t face this difficult thing I’m saying — or he doesn’t have the confidence in himself to listen to me.” That’s the broader thing I was talking about — the universal disappointment that we all feel at some point in our parents. It’s okay, our parents are human beings too, and I think that as humans we rarely say the right thing in that moment. The way the movie plays out, I imagine that maybe 10 years from now Sam and her father will have a more productive conversation about their weekend, but that wasn’t going to happen that day.

How do you explain the final moments of the film, when Sam's father begs her to drive and hands her the car keys?

For me, there are multiple readings. It's like, “You're leading. You're in control.” It's a peace offering. “Just take it. This is the best I can do.” But it's also selfish. He's tired. He's been walking all day. He doesn't actually want to drive. It's a peace offering that works for him. It's a peace offering on his terms. It's also just them in the front, and Matt's in the back. It's all these things. It's complicated. He's someone in that moment who knows he's said the wrong thing and doesn't know how to fix it. He's clinging to some solution.

She shuts the door on the two men outside the car for a moment, allowing them to enjoy the discomfort. But there is no violent fight, no major confrontation between them.

In the short term, it's easier to forget and ignore what happened than to live through real conflict and hard things. One alternative I imagined was that their friendship would end, they would fade away, they would lose contact, but they would never talk about what happened.