The discrepancy between a feature film and its trailer can be stark and has been the basis for litigation. This isn’t the place to get into the particulars of Woulfe et al v. Universal City Studios LLC — the matter was settled out of court — nor is it altogether applicable to India Donaldson’s debut feature, “Good One.” But, yeah, the trailer for the picture is misleading.

The trailer suggests a concatenation of “Deliverance” (1972), “La Cage aux Folles” (1978), and a slasher flick. “Good One” is something else and, I should add, something better. To what should it be likened? A short story by the Canadian writer Alice Munro, perhaps, or, in its plumbing of familial discord, Anton Chekhov. Intimacy of vision is coupled with modesty of means. Within that dynamic, Ms. Donaldson touches a nerve.

The framework of the story is straightforward; the relationship between the three main players, less so. 

Sam (Lily Collias) is a privileged 17-year-old girl. She lives with her father, his new wife, and a baby step-brother in an elegant Brooklyn townhouse. Her father Chris (James le Gros) is of sufficiently liberal mien to welcome Sam’s girlfriend as part of the family. On the docket for the weekend is an annual hike through the Catskills with Chris’s friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) and Matt’s adolescent son Dylan (Julian Grady).

Except all is not right at Matt’s household. He’s in the midst of a divorce and things are fractious between father and son. When Chris and Sam pull up to Matt’s building — a rowhouse in a less genteel part of the borough — there is an argument afoot. Doors are slammed; expletives heard. Dylan reneges on the trip. Matt clambers into Chris’s car, cracks wise, and fools no one. The trip does not get off to a good start.

Before too long, we’re made aware that these two grown men aren’t exactly birds of a feather. Upon stopping at a convenience store, Matt stocks up on a raft of items over which Chris is aghast — junk food, an umbrella, like that. When the trio arrive at their destination, Chris reorganizes Matt’s backpack largely by deaccessioning most of its contents. The two men bicker in a way that speaks to the length and depth of their friendship. The lone indulgence Matt is allowed is a flask of booze. 

Sam observes the back-and-forth between her father and his best friend with a bemused condescension. Matt’s continuing haplessness as a city slicker out in the woods — he forgot his sleeping bag, can you believe it — is a source of amusement. But when three strangers intrude upon our trio’s surroundings, Sam gets wary. So do we. They’re an odd bunch, these chummy guys with their interest in spiritualism. Not too soon, though, they’re up and gone: a masculine MacGuffin less toxic than is initially implied. Which isn’t to say masculinity isn’t toxic….

“Good One” is a simmering provocation, tense and foreboding. Having attended the film with a cross-generational group, the resultant conversation tended toward the combative and vociferous. Opinions, to put it mildly, differed about a film in which some characters are less unscathed than others, but all characters are, in their own idiosyncratic way, off-putting.

The hub on which the film turns shouldn’t be spoiled in a review, but Ms. Donaldson handles it with an understatement that is no less effective for being unresolved. Ms. Collias has been heralded as the breakout star for playing a character who is wise beyond her years. Yet Messrs. le Gros and McCarthy are equally nuanced as middle-aged men who’ve hardly come to terms with their own shortcomings.

All the while, the dramas inherent to the human species — that is to say, a creature prone to contradictions, selfishness, and love — are played out against the majesty of the wooded environs of New York State. “Good One” is a debut that troubles.