Companion Review – Go Into This Date Blind

Companion is, obviously, one of those movies that works much better if you enter it with no information. If you want to see the film, stop researching it and buy a ticket immediately. The short version is that Drew Hancock’s feature directorial debut is gorgeous to look at and vicious to think about. It’s a raw experience that feels like it fully reassembles itself into a new movie every 15 minutes. I really enjoyed it, but I know I would have enjoyed it more if I didn’t know as much as I did going in.

Hancock isn’t a total newcomer, but this is a new frontier for him. As a screenwriter, he contributed to off-kilter comedies like Blue Mountain State and Mr. Pickles. He directed a few segments for strange outlets like the Spike TV Video Game Awards, but he’s more of a writer. Allegedly, producer and Barbarian director Zach Cregger briefly considered helming Hancock’s script as his follow-up. When he saw the writer’s passion for the project, he took a chance on a newcomer. Cregger has a good eye because Hancock enters the field with truly stunning confidence and a bold vision. Hollywood just caught up to Cregger, offering Hancock a shot at Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty.

The Perfect Getaway

Jack Quaid’s Josh and Sophie Thatcher’s Iris certainly look like the perfect couple. They’re absolutely smitten with each other, blissfully recounting the rom-com meet-cute that brought them together. There’s only one problem: Iris can’t seem to get along with Josh’s friends. Josh and Iris join fellow loving couple Eli (Harvey Guillén) and Patrick (Lukas Gage) and edgy mean girl Kat (Megan Suri) on a retreat to a remote cabin in the woods. The owner happens to be a shady Russian aristocrat with whom Kat carries out a sordid affair. All seems well as the sextet dances, drinks, and laughs the night away, but Iris can’t shake the feeling that she doesn’t belong. The party goes off the rails as the homeowner attacks Iris, forcing her to take his life to defend herself. The sudden shock of violence unlocks dark secrets that threaten to tear Josh and Iris’s loving relationship apart.

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The big reveal of Companion is simultaneously a devious gambit and the basic premise. WB put out a teaser that perfectly suggested a tone and atmosphere while revealing very little, but the trailer was less competent. The Companion trailer and nearly every promotion piece since cut the legs out of the film’s flawless mystery. You’ll feel like you read the Wikipedia plot summary before you came to the theater. I never stopped thinking about how much better the film would be without a shred of information. That trailer is one of the most potent acts of self-sabotage I’ve ever seen a film engage in. In protest, I will do my part to avoid spoiling the main twist of Companion.

Romance is Complicated

Companion doesn’t want to settle down with a single genre when it can play the field. It mostly splits its time between horror and comedy, but slices of survival action and even twisty heist movies slip in. At its core, the film takes a magnifying glass to romantic comedies with truly horrific results. All of the tropes take on new meanings as the script’s darkness comes into view. Make no mistake, this movie is as mean as it is empathetic. Morality lives in the subtle moments, barely peeking its head into the film’s various mansion corridors. When a beam of light pierces through the film’s grim portrait of modern love, it rarely lasts long. You can find real love in this film, but you won’t get to live in it. Survival and romance find themselves at odds here, but that tumultuous relationship breeds compelling conflict.

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The specific intricacies of the plot aside, Companion is a film about escaping a toxic relationship. Sophie Thatcher is a woman in crisis, and Jack Quaid is a polite outer shell around that crisis. The higher-order evil that taints every corner of the story folds neatly into much more mundane issues. It’s more than controlling men and disposable women. The film’s heightened reality turns entitlement and dissociation into forces of existential horror. It’s never as massive as it feels, but the raw, gritty emotions beneath the mundane events lift everything to another level. Of course, it wouldn’t feel as moving without the excellent cast. Thatcher, Quaid, Gage, Guillén, Suri, and even Friend are all in top form here. Honestly, it’s kind of amazing to see the two leads play versions of their most consistent typecasting choice and deliver them with new dimensions.

Companion is a stellar horror comedy with some of the most gripping on-screen violence in recent memory. It’s also one of the more compelling explorations of the human condition in the genre. The only thing I can recommend more highly than Companion is avoiding the full-length trailer for Companion. Make it a date movie and enjoy the oddly long drive home.