COMPANION Review: A Fun, Twisty Debut Techno-Thriller From Drew Hancock

Editor, U.S. ; Dallas, Texas (@HatefulJosh)
COMPANION Review: A Fun, Twisty Debut Techno-Thriller From Drew Hancock

Sophie Thatcher plays ingenue girlfriend to Jack Quaid’s very bad boyfriend in Drew Hancock’s Companion, a twisty thriller with plenty of surprises up its very bloody sleeves.

Josh (Quaid) and his girlfriend Iris (Thatcher) are heading up to a woodsy cabin for a weekend getaway with friends and Iris is nervous. She’s the most charming girl you’ll ever meet; pretty, but not too pretty, inoffensively dressed and mannered, demure, guileless, but with a certain sense of insecurity about her position amongst the group. She’s not sure that host, Kat (Megan Suri, It Lives Inside), likes her, she’s gotten a bad vibe before and is concerned about spending time with her. Josh ensures his apprehensive partner that everything is going to be fine, which seems to put her mind at ease for the moment, but right from the beginning, something seems off.

The minute the happy couple enters what turns out to be more of a mansion than a cabin, Iris’s fears appear to be at least somewhat proved correct as Kat greets her with some hesitation, getting in a crack about how she doesn’t like Iris’s type. Neither Iris nor we know exactly what that was all about, but she’s flustered enough that she ducks away from the group – now happily gabbing and catching up – to get in a shower after her long road trip.

Rounding out the sextet for the weekend is Eli (Harvey Guillén, What We Do in the Shadows) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lucas Gage, Smile 2), and Kat’s situationship – and the owner of the estate in question – Sergei (Rupert Friend), a shady seeming Russian bajillionaire with plenty of cash to throw around and not a very clear source for any of it.  

Things are going swimmingly, that is until day two rolls around, when some unwanted advances by Sergei lead to him getting a knife to the throat. One dead billionaire later, the new quintet goes into panic mode, and a series of increasingly wild revelations – some heavily foreshadowed, but plenty, well, not – follows, and we are now in the midst of trying to find a way out of a bloody murder.

It turns out that Iris isn’t exactly what we think she is. This surprise – and I use the term loosely, thanks to some particularly spoiler-y marketing – reveals the device that will fuel the rest of the film’s run time. It’s hard to be delicate about the twist without revealing anything, but suffice to say that Companion finds itself in similar near future settings as recent (lesser) films like Subservience and AfrAid, though it’s aims are very different from those films and it definitely laps them when it comes to engaging the audience.

Writer/director Hancock’s vision for Companion is crystal clear from the jump, he paints a world not too dissimilar from our own where moderate jumps in technology have resulted in quantum leaps in what some might see as quality of life. A career TV writer, Hancock uses his skills writing in serialized drama and genre comedy (Suburgatory, My Dead Ex) to effectively plant seeds throughout Companion that bear glorious fruit as the film’s frequent shocks hit the audience with a series of satisfying slaps across the face. This film is alive with story and character, and it is a joy to experience.

Hancock smartly sequesters the story in this cabin, limiting the character count and giving the audience ample time with each of them. And if it seems like maybe two or three of our central characters may get short shrift, it eventually becomes clear that that is for a very good reason. The script is manipulative of the audience just enough to leave them with a sense of discomfort, a recognition that something is not quite right about this person or that interaction, but without a clear explanation as to why. Though as the true meaning of this weekend away becomes more and more clear, all of the pieces fall into place.

Thanks to strong central performances from Thatcher – who’s on a real hot streak after this film and last year’s brilliant turn in Heretic – and Quaid, Companion manages to take what is an essentially pulpy premise and gives it true life. Thatcher in particular is asked to stretch quite a bit in her performance from the beginning of the film to the end, and she handles it with aplomb. Quaid, on the other hand, has succeeded in weaponizing his effortlessly inviting countenance into something genuinely sinister and devilish in a way that really hits the spot. The supporting performances here are uniformly strong as well, with Guillén and Gage playing brilliantly off each other in what becomes a very complicated relationship as the film progresses.

Though Companion doesn’t quite do enough to hide its first big twist, it’s the fun that follows that really seals the deal. Just when you think you’ve got the movie figured out, and the movie seems to tell you where it’s going, Hancock pulls the rug out from under us all and throws in new, delightfully unexpected twists to keep the audience at the edge of our collective seats. Companion is an impressive first feature from Drew Hancock, a remarkably fun techno-thriller that takes every opportunity to zig when you’re expecting a zag. Well done.

Companion

Director(s)
  • Drew Hancock
Writer(s)
  • Drew Hancock
Cast
  • Sophie Thatcher
  • Harvey Guillén
  • Jack Quaid
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Drew HancockSophie ThatcherHarvey GuillénJack QuaidThriller

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