Sophia Michaels
A Good Person, the forthcoming feature film from Zach Braff, travels a convoluted path through grief – beginning with its often unexpected appearance in otherwise happy and normal lives and landing somewhere in between the ways in which it pulls some people apart and pulls others back together. The first official trailer for the movie, which hits theaters March 2023, illustrates the complicated ebb and flow of the latter.
Florence Pugh stars as Allison, a young woman who finds her life thrown off course after a fatal road accident involving her soon to be sister-in-law unravels everything she thought she knew. Self-medicating with prescription pills and alcohol doesn’t ease her pain as much as she hoped it would, but what proves to be more healing than anything is the development of an unexpected connection with her would-be father-in-law Daniel, portrayed by Morgan Freeman.
“For the model train enthusiast, we lord over a world where the neighbors are always kind, the lovers always end up together, and the trains always take you to the far-off places you always swore you’d go,” Daniel says. “In life, of course, nothing is nearly as neat and tidy.”
Hoping to reel herself in before she’s too far gone, Allison attends a support group meeting at a church. But when she runs into Daniel here, she’s resolved to finding another without a constant, physical reminder of the pain she experiences daily, having been the one driving during the accident. “Don’t run away now because of me,” he tells her, insisting that there must be meaning behind her choosing that meeting out of the thousands of others that might have been available.
It turns out he needs her as much as she needs him. Tasked with raising his teenage granddaughter, Daniel is in way over his head – he’s already caught her in bed with a man who says she told him she was 18. “He’s a fuckboy, that’s what the kids call them,” their older neighbor helpfully explains.
Together, Daniel and Allison set out on a journey towards healing, comforted by the fact that they aren’t alone in their grief.
