Companion

by Eric Lindbom

Since I’m allergic to spoilers, I’m cagey about giving too much away about the tasty hook that drives COMPANION (in theaters). We meet its title character, a young, clingy woman, via voice over as she describes two seismic moments in her life – when she met her boyfriend and later when she killed him! Iris is played by Sophie Thatcher, a charismatic, emotive actor who believably blows hot (the punky nun in HERETIC) and cold (YELLOWJACKETS) and ably plays both registers here without ever losing our rooting interest.

Iris is besotted with her attentive boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) and nervous when she’s invited for the weekend to a posh mansion to meet some of his close friends — Kat, a possible romantic rival (Megan Suri), her rich but untrustworthy Russian sugar daddy Sergey (Rupert Friend), and gay couple adonis Patrick (Lucas Gage) and his lumpen boyfriend Eli (Harvey Guillen from WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS). It’s soon clear neither Iris nor Josh is whom we take them for; he’s a conniving, ineffectual jerk with murder on his mind, and Iris isn’t exactly human. After a key reveal, COMPANION smartly skewers AI, sex robots, meet cute cliches and incel fantasies, updating THE STEPFORD WIVES for our tech-wary decade.

Perhaps to prep fans for the twisty path ahead, the makers of COMPANION are playing up its participants from BARBARIAN, but that’s on the producing side. This diverting sci-fi/horror/comedy was conceived by former TV writer turned first-time director Drew Hancock. He’s a master of misdirection, so here’s a subtle example. We take Sergey for a sex or gun trafficker when he says, “I have my fingers in a lot of pots” and “It’s a dirty business.” We later learn he made his fortune in the sod business.

Cheeky horror romps are the rage of late, but many lean on attitude and suffer sustainability issues. They lure us with a clever premise (The poster! The pitch!) initially exploited with panache before degenerating into shruggable gore and forgettable mayhem. Hancock’s achievement is how COMPANION keeps brimming with clever tangents that surprise us throughout. The imagination, not just the energy, never flags.

If the horror-adjacent STRANGE DARLING, another uncanny twist-o-rama, feels stickier that’s due to its intensity and sense of danger. While I doubt gorehounds will mind, the emphasis with COMPANION is its wit, not scares. COMPANION’s bird of a feather isn’t a raven but a lark.