by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Harvey Guillén, Woody Fu, Lukas Gage, Marc Menchaca, Megan Suri, Rupert Friend
Intro:
… plays the audience like a woodwind, creating sharp gasps with its horror just to pull the air right back out again with its humour.
Fresh off delivering the legitimately unique and unpredictable Barbarian (two descriptors that are in rare supply in modern cinema, let alone modern horror), Zach Cregger, as producer, has now backed another oddball comedic voice in horror. Writer/Director Drew Hancock is similar to Barbarian, in that it’s also fixated on the nature of gendered violence and how interactions between men and women can mutate into something wholly irrational.
Not that this is just a carbon copy, though. If anything, Companion succeeds because it actively sticks to its own lane rather than making the mistake of trying to ‘recreate unpredictability’, as often happens with surprise successes.
Heck, it doesn’t even try that hard at pulling one over on the audience. There is a twist involved, but not only is it revealed fairly early on, it’s foreshadowed quite effectively; well-established, rather than smacking you in the face with it. Where it gets interesting is what the film ultimately does with it, using it as a foundation to examine the way that relationships can become less about two equals bringing out the best in each other, and more about existing purely as an extension of someone else; like an opaquer I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
The production overall links arms with the recent crop of modernised rape-and-revenge flicks like Blink Twice, Don’t Worry Darling, and Promising Young Woman, boldly building up the tension of a bunch of friends getting together in a ‘rustic cabin’ in the woods until it becomes the worst place anyone could possibly be found in. And that’s before the murders start.
Jack Quaid is eerily fitting as the main controlling force within the main couplet, letting his every word and movement exude an aura of Douchebag Triumphant. Even in the small moments, like when he laughs to himself after accidentally making a pun, Quaid effectively gets across just how highly the man thinks of himself. And how lowly he thinks of everyone else.
It’s against that force of vacuous self-aggrandisement that Sophie Thatcher’s Iris stands, and her performance is on a whole other level. Along with keeping up with the film’s perpetual shifting between bone-chilling existential horror and beautifully-consistent dark comedy, her actions and reactions create the yin to Josh’s yang – emphasising the film’s brutal observations concerning abusive relationships. Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn all get represented here.
And yet, there’s still an actual romantic edge to the film. It’s painfully upfront about just how badly things can turn out, but it isn’t fully nihilistic to the idea of love. This is where Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage’s gay couple enter the conversation. Amidst the torturous (literally at one point) dynamic between the leads, Guillén and Gage’s relationship shines brightly. Their interactions are still beholden to the central twist, but they provide a dash of tragic purity that adds dimensions to the film’s perspective on true love; permission really is sexier than control.
Companion plays the audience like a woodwind, creating sharp gasps with its horror just to pull the air right back out again with its humour. It offers a suitably bleak look at the murky depths that romantic relationships can sink to, deconstructing quite a few tropes in the process, without a single moment wasted or diversionary.
