General [SPOILER ALERT!], Companion is best enjoyed going in cold.
Companion should be a lesson to all the marketers out there: less is more. Just use some really evocative clips from the movie, keep the dialogue minimal, and gin up interest. Also, you forget how exciting it can be to have a whole movie theatre figuring out what’s going on, in real time together: pure magic! Stop treating everyone like morons assuming we will hate a movie we don’t know everything about before we go into it. Save that energy for Sonic 3 or something for children, and let the adults have their fun in Companion!
Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is very nervous. After an adorable meet cute with the love of her life Josh (Jack Quaid), she’s preparing for this big weekend getaway with all Josh’s friends. Iris knows she’s probably fine with Eli (Harvey Guillen) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage), but she’s more concerned about the surly Kat (Megan Suri) and her strange, pro-Russian quasi boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend) who found this incredible, remote house to have a delightful weekend getaway.
I kept Companion’s description vague, but you probably instantly could tell that we’re basically in a horror movie setup. But Companion’s joy is in its Barbarian like way of surprisingly turning the story every 20 or so minutes. The marketers couldn’t help but spoil the first big reveal (I’ll put the trailer below, but don’t watch it for maximum enjoyment), but the creators knew that that big secret was probably going to come out. Instead, that big reveal resets the film, and puts us into a new reality and new story we follow, again, for 20 or so minutes until the next big turn happens. I was on the edge of my seat, giddy, at what new places the story was going to go, and the perfect tone this movie finds. It’s a delicious mixture of scary and funny, reaching the great heights of films like Cabin in the Woods before it. As more gets revealed, the lies and delusions characters tell themselves get called out and rebranded in the funniest weirdest ways, making the audience laugh just enough to set up the next big gasp moment, then go back to laughing again, without sacrificing writer director Drew Hancock’s story integrity.
I’ll do my best not to spoil their roles, but the movie also works because of Companions incredible “stars on the rise” cast. Every character knows their role, how they fit in, and plays it to perfection. The biggest winner is Sophie Thatcher, who needs to be brilliant and flexible or the movie would fall apart. The Heretic co-lead nails her big spotlight performance here, subtly weaving in hints and choices that make Iris really work as a character. The supporting character winner for me is Lukas Gage, who like Kyle Gallner before him, learned from those years as the bit player in great horror films to really be ready for his incredible turn here, that will stay with me for a while. Jack Quaid and Harvey Guillen have been here before, and give the movie the opposite energy of Thatcher and Gage, cementing the tone Drew Hancock wants the story to have.
I hope you read this review after you watched Companion. I’m so glad I went in mostly cold here, and went on one of the best in theatre rides with an audience I’ve had in a long time, as everyone was in my same headspace, ready for a fun devious time. And if Companion portends what is to come of our world, it’s gonna get real weird, real soon.