Companion: Film Review
I have enjoyed Sophie Thatcher‘s recent films – The Boogeyman and Heretic – so I felt pretty confident going into the scream queen’s next horror Companion.
She plays Iris, who goes for a weekend getaway with her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) and his friends Kat (Megan Suri), Eli (Harvey Guillen), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Sergey (Rupert Friend) at a remote home in the woods. Chaos ensues when one of them kills another in alleged self-defence.
I am not going to divulge any more about the plot in this review because I think everyone should go into Companion knowing as little as possible so they can truly appreciate the surprises. It completely baffles me that the marketing gave away one of the big reveals. Try to avoid the poster and the trailers if you can as your experience will be all the better for it.
Companion isn’t a horror exactly. It’s a blend of many genres – sci-fi, comedy, romance, thriller and horror. To sum it up more succinctly, I’d describe it as a comedy thriller. It’s very hard to balance those tones and deliver on them both properly yet somehow writer/director Drew Hancock achieves it. With the horror, it’s not scary (it’s mostly a lot of fun) but there is plenty of blood and violence.
I was most impressed with Hancock’s script and Thatcher and Quaid’s performances. This is smart and the dialogue is really well written. There are plenty of twists and surprises, it’s super unpredictable and I laughed out loud far more than I expected. I didn’t love every story direction and it didn’t fully zing for me but it’s still great fun.
This role requires a lot from Thatcher in both a physical and emotional sense and she nails all the requirements with ease. I love that for my new scream queen! Quaid truly utilises the fact that he can convincingly play both charming and twisted (as we’ve seen in Plus One and Scream) and the two work well together. I also want to give a shout-out to Gage for playing an unexpected character and Friend for hilariously pulling a Dan Stevens and disguising himself as a shady Russian.
Companion isn’t the absolute banger I was hoping for, but it is still an entertaining horror-comedy.
In cinemas from Friday 31st January
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
