‘Companion’: Review

Dir/scr: Drew Hancock. US. 2025. 97mins

Great to look at but with plenty going on underneath the surface, Companion — like its central protagonist — has surprising hidden depths. Savvy viewers will know right from the initial meet cute between Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) that all is not as it appears in this tale of a romantic getaway gone horribly wrong, but debut writer/director Drew Hancock takes this entertaining sci-fi horror in many surprising directions over its brisk running time.

Underneath that glossy surface, it makes some biting comments 

Opening in the US, UK and other global markets on January 31 after a festival premiere at Germany’s Fantasy Filmfest, the film is produced by New Line — behind, as the film’s marketing is at pains to make clear, both schmaltzy romance The Notebook and horror hit Barbarian. This gleeful tonal mash-up informs Companion and, while audiences are advised to avoid spoilers, strong word of mouth should see genre fans seeking this out in cinemas and, later, on streaming.

The presence of Sophie Thatcher, who impressed in last year’s Heretic and HBO show Yellowjackets, should also help attract viewers, and she is excellent here as the pretty, slightly kooky Iris. She is a vision with her perfect hair and huge smile — although something is slightly off in her walk, the way she holds herself. Where things are headed is immediately made clear when, in opening voiceover, Iris recounts two of the most important moments in her life — the day she met Josh, and the day she killed him.

Nevertheless, when Iris first locks eyes with Josh in a supermarket — seen in an all-too-familiar kind of saccharine flashback — it is love at first sight. Months later, however, a weekend with his friends in a secluded lake house will put their romance to the ultimate test. (The self driving car the couple use to get there is an indicator of the technologically advanced near future in which the film is set). “Just smile and act happy,” is Josh’s advice to calm Iris’s nerves, the first of many red flags that will soon festoon the film like bunting. This isolated cabin in the woods set up is nothing new, but Hancock uses this familiar framework, and increasing levels of violence, to explore ideas that go beyond the usual tropes of the genre. 

At first, the film seems to lean into cliche, most obviously with its characters. There’s the bitchy friend Kat (Megan Suri), whose obvious hatred of Iris could well be down to jealous. There is gay couple Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), whose picture-perfect romance seems a little too good to be true. And then there’s Russian Sergey (Rupert Friend, having a blast with a mullet and strong accent), the multimillionaire owner of the house, who has made his fortune in dirty dealings. As the group get drunk and dance the night away, we know it won’t be long before the revelry turns sour. 

In the cold light of day, Hancock reveals his hand, bringing all of the characters into sharp relief and letting the audience into a secret they had probably already guessed. From here, the body count ramps up and the gore increases, but the film is actually more concerned with real world horrors. As Iris realises that Josh’s feelings for her are less about love and more about gratification and control, she must attempt to override her own hardwired impulses and discover her own worth. 

Thatcher effortlessly runs the gamut from people-pleasing eye candy to free-willed final girl, and also makes clear the emotional minefield Iris faces as she realises she has been subject to a particularly insidious form of coercive control. Quaid, too, expertly embodies all the conflicting facets of Josh, a handsome, seemingly benign young man with toxic feelings of entitlement — and worse — lying just underneath the surface. The more we see of him, both in the lake house and in flashback, the more we come to realise what a mundane, monstrous everyman the character really is. 

With expansive lensing from Eli Born, disorienting editing from Brett W Bachman and Josh Ethier and a host of well-chosen songs peppering the soundtrack, including a brilliant use of ’You Told Me’ by The Turtles at a crucial moment, Companion looks fantastic. But, underneath that glossy surface, it makes some biting comments about power dynamics, free will, and what it really means to be human.