Fall in Love with 'Companion'

Companion is a nasty, funny, and sharp commentary on "nice guys" that proves that a movie can be humorous and scary at the same time.

I’ve never been one to particularly enjoy horror comedies, so when I do, it’s a rare exception. My biggest issue with the genre often lies in its imbalance: many horror comedies lean too heavily to either “horror” or “comedy”. Some feel like slapstick movies dressed up with monsters (usually zombies, à la Zombieland or Little Monsters) and extreme gore (think Evil Dead II and the “splatstick” subgenre), while others come across as simply meta horror movies—satirical, sure, but not laugh-out-loud funny (like Scream or Cabin in the Woods). Of course, none of those movies are bad (Evil Dead is literally my favorite horror franchise), but they don’t feel like true “horror comedy” to me. The best examples of the genre strike a delicate balance, blending humor and tension so seamlessly that you’re laughing one moment and hiding your face the next. Companion achieves just that.

Directed by newcomer Drew Hancock and produced by Barbarian director Zach Cregger, Companion follows Iris (Sophie Thatcher), an AI sex robot crudely referred to as a “fuckbot” and technically referred to as a “companion”, as she navigates a weekend trip hosted by Sergey (Rupert Friend), a local rich guy, alongside her boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid), and his friends: aloof and edgy Kat (Megan Suri), comic relief Eli (Harvey Guillén), and Eli’s doting boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage). Iris struggles to connect with the group, shy and awkward for reasons she cannot wrap her head around. The trip spirals out of control when Sergey makes an inappropriate advance, devolving into a chaotic, high-stakes cat-and-mouse game as wacky as it is stressful where the roles of predator and prey get more and more blurry as the story progresses.

The film’s casting is one of its biggest strengths. Sophie Thatcher shines as Iris, delivering a performance that evolves alongside her character. She starts out the movie closer to “factory settings”, an overly emotional, lovestruck automaton, grappling with feelings she can’t quite articulate or control. There’s a sense of inexperience and helplessness about her. Her feelings—fear, heartbreak, guilt, love—are raw and childlike like she’s experiencing them for the first time, and she visibly seeks reassurance and validation from Josh. As the story unfolds, she grows more accustomed to her emotions, comes more into her own, and learns to keep her cards close to her chest in a way she clearly never knew before. She fights for her own “survival” all the while trying to figure out what it truly means to be alive and autonomous. It’s a nuanced performance that feels authentic, and all of her progress—her newfound maturity and independence—feels earned. If you were to put clips of her performance at the beginning of the movie and at the end, they would seem like two different characters, totally separated by the weight of experience.

Jack Quaid’s portrayal of Josh is equally effective, if familiar. The role is reminiscent of his characters in The Boys (Hughie’s hapless charm) and Scream (Richie’s hapless-charm-turned-incel-obnoxiousness)—overall, he’s a seemingly endearing, nerdy nice guy with a dark edge. I think his recent appearances in both The Boys and the Novocaine trailer emphasize the “endearing” and obscure the “incel” enough to allow his character some plausible deniability, leaving you unsure of what he will bring to the table because it could be so either-or; it’s almost the opposite of Bill Skårsgard’s appearance as a shockingly good guy in Barbarian. Regardless, he is evidently typecast for a reason, moving between romantic charm, deranged entitlement, and raw menace with ease.

I enjoyed seeing Megan Suri play a more sharp, no-nonsense character with Kat after previously enjoying her softer, preppier roles in It Lives Inside, Missing, and Never Have I Ever, and I hope she continues picking up all kinds of varied roles since she seems to do great work in all of them. Harvey Guillén provides intermittent comic relief as Eli, though not all his jokes land. Lukas Gage also impresses with a softer yet more imposing performance, which seems to be becoming a specialty of his (such as his brief but effective role in Smile 2).

In terms of story, Barbarian’s influence is clear. One of my favorite moments of that movie is when it abruptly cuts from a brutal murder to Justin Long casually driving down the highway, sunglasses on, singing along to Donavan’s “Riki Tiki Tavi” on the radio: a quick switch that brings you from the pinnacle of fear to a moment of catharsis so fast that the confusion adds to the humor. Companion bounces back and forth in a similar way, moving seamlessly between laugh-out-loud moments, genuine emotion, and nail-biting tension.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these tones are mutually exclusive, however, as the movie often uses these differently charged moments to elicit more emotion in the viewer later on. One specific gag that occurs repeatedly throughout the movie centers on the idea of cheesy “meet-cutes” between the characters. These moments are always associated with joy, romance, or humor, building a positive association with them from the beginning, but later in the story, another recollection of the moment is almost imposing or intimidating, and the intrusive change of the memory makes it feel almost like a violation. At the end of the movie, when the balance is restored, reminding you of the humor those moments always held, it’s nostalgic, familiar, and satisfying to us in the same way it is for the character. Literally the same scene played out the same way three times—all the same music and dialogue—and yet it manages to make you feel three completely different ways.

The tone switches never feel jarring: one moment, a character is kicking their way out of a car, and you can almost feel the ticking of a clock with each hit of their feet against the glass, the threat growing closer, closer, closer, but within a minute, you find yourself laughing at a familiar comedic beat with a dumb-as-rocks sheriff (played by Marc Menchaca). The kind of tonal layering and variation is a hallmark of the film’s finely tuned screenplay, ensuring that the humor never undercuts the horror and the scares never make the jokes feel out of place: a true-blue overlap of fear and comedy.

Also like Barbarian, Companion offers sharp feminist commentary without feeling excessively didactic or condescending. The film explores the objectification of women through the lens of AI, examining how men blame women for their own insecurities and shortcomings. As their superficial charms give way to entitlement and manipulation, the satire, though occasionally on the nose, becomes both biting and deeply unsettling because it never feels very far removed from reality. No part of me doubts that this is how men would behave with these “companions” because they don’t behave any better with living, breathing women today. We’re reminded yet again of the ugly underbelly of so-called “nice guys”: layered with a lack of self-awareness, an over-reliance on the blind devotion and forgiveness of the women in their lives, and hatred of women who refuse to give in to what they want.

At its heart, the film explores themes of codependency, self-discovery, and autonomy, particularly through Iris’s journey to assert her independence after being trapped in a less-than-equal relationship with Josh. She refuses to limit herself for the sake of his success and happiness or go down for his mistakes. The story underscores how societal norms and male entitlement can stifle women’s freedom, often forcing them into dependency on partners who readily discard them when convenient. 

All in all, Companion is a cutting, scary, and truly funny horror comedy. Sophie Thatcher excels (as she usually does in horror roles, frankly) and elevates this to a must-watch. If Companion is what The Sun envisioned when, a decade ago, they speculated about women preferring robot companions over men by 2025, I’m all for it. See it in theaters on January 31st, 2025.

★★★★☆

8.2 out of 10

Check out Companion in theaters.

'Presence' Will Haunt You

Presence is a poignant exploration of how grief, love, and regret can linger.

Presence was the biggest surprise of a movie I’ve seen in a long time. Leading up to its release, all I’ve heard were people complaining about how Neon chooses to advertise its horror movies, something along the lines of “not every horror movie should be advertised as the scariest movie ever; you saw what happened with Longlegs,” all the while Longlegs was the highest grossing indie horror movie in the last decade. Regardless, everyone was saying that Presence in particular was more of a family drama than horror.

Personally, I think those people have a very limited perception of what horror can be. While its first-person perspective gimmick, shot from the point of view of a ghost haunting a house, invites comparisons to Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature (2024) or David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2018), I think the closest thematic and emotional connection is to Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo (2008). 

Lake Mungo is yet another horror movie that has received middling reviews for “not being scary” due to its slow-pace and lack of traditional jumpscares or gore. Formatted as a found-footage mockumentary, it follows the Palmer family’s search for meaning after the death of sixteen-year-old Alice Palmer. They await and find ghosts, real and fake, contact mediums, try to solve the “mystery” of Alice’s life, but ultimately must make peace with the fact that she is gone. In the movie’s most famous moment, her family recovers a strange video in which Alice seemingly sees her own future corpse while on a trip to Lake Mungo. It’s a somber and gloomy depiction of the horror of being unseen, of a life unfulfilled

Presence flips this idea on its head, almost as if it is imagining what could have happened if Alice’s family had started searching for her while she was still alive. The story follows Chloe (Callina Liang), a young woman grieving the loss of her best friend, which has left her estranged from her brother Tyler (Eddy Maday) and emotionally distant from her mother, Rebecca (Lucy Liu). Their father, Chris (Chris Sullivan), holds the family together as they move into a new house to start fresh. However, Chloe begins to witness supernatural phenomena driven by the ghost already haunting the place, our point-of-view character. This review will contain spoilers, so be careful if you’re thinking of seeing it!

From the very first scene of the movie, the ghost is imbued with confusion and shyness, retreating when anyone so much as turns in its direction and running back to hide in the closet when overwhelmed. It looks around the house it appeared in like it doesn’t recognize anything at all, draped in a sense of melancholia and helplessness. It only gains a sense of comfort and warmth when it discovers Chloe, following her through the house, tidying her books when she studies too much and growing aggravated when she shows interest in Ryan (West Mulholland), a boy it clearly distrusts. It watches her with a sense of tenderness, and you think that if it could reach out and comfort her in her times of grief, it would; it yearns to.

As the story progresses, Ryan’s true intentions become more and more clear through his increasingly violent and predatory behavior. In one of its few moments of deliberate action, the ghost foils his attempt to drug Chloe by knocking over the drink he brought her. It also reveals itself to the family in other ways, ransacking Tyler’s room in a fit of rage after he makes a sexist comment about a girl in his class.

The family soon learns through a medium that the ghost is confused and stuck in time, perhaps from the future. This moment—the ghost’s confusion, its anxiety of being seen, the fact that it is a ghost from a death that has not yet happened—is what brings about the sense of dread that permeates the rest of the movie, especially as Ryan’s face pops up again and again. Like when Alice Palmer saw her own bloated corpse on the lake, you are hit with this sense of inevitability: something terrible is on the horizon, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It weighs heavy on your shoulders, especially when Ryan comes over again while Chloe’s parents are out, promising to get Tyler “out of the way” so they can spend some time alone together.

The movie spells out what is coming, and the ghost watches, unable to intervene, as Ryan drugs Tyler’s drink. It stares, looks right at it, anger and helplessness more pronounced than ever before as Tyler falls asleep and Ryan heads upstairs. The inevitability is horrible, nearly unbearable to watch, but you must. 

Chloe falls unconscious soon enough, and Ryan begins to rant at her about control—I gave you control, and now I’m taking it back—and admits that he is responsible for the death of Chloe’s friends. He begins to taunt her by covering her mouth with plastic wrap and pulling it away right before she runs out of breath, over and over and over, and the ghost rushes downstairs, screaming through the void as much as it can, and it succeeds, waking Tyler.

Tyler rushes upstairs and shoves Ryan off of Chloe, and the fight between the two leads to them both falling out of the window and dying, forcing the viewer to the realization that it was Tyler, Chloe’s brother, who has been the ghost all along.

This realization completely changes how we view the events of the rest of the movie; subconsciously, the ghost knew what Ryan was going to do, so every glare, every interruption, every moment it stood there and watched Chloe breathe, now is colored by a sinking sense of regret. The two siblings never got along while Tyler was alive, to the point where their father asked Tyler something along the lines of: “Would it kill you to stand up for your sister for once?”

At the end of the movie, Chloe is no longer able to see the ghost, but her mother is. She follows it to the mirror in the living room and sees Tyler’s reflection standing there. She collapses in a moment of grief: “It’s your brother!” She cries. “He came back to save you!”

When watching this movie, I believe that you are forced to feel those very same feelings that Alice felt seeing her own ghost for the first time: the dread, the hopelessness, the unavoidable and imminent presence of death, right in front of you. You feel it getting closer, and closer, and closer in what was at first at crawl that quickly becomes a sprint. The moment of climax is quick, barely ten seconds long, when Tyler crashes through the door and knocks himself and Ryan out of the window, and it hits like a punch to the gut: realization and catharsis and relief and terror all at once. It’s a brilliant moment. The tension is gone but the tragedy remains, as loud and as painful as ever.

The movies I’ve always found most horrifying are those about a life left unlived, unseen by anyone. Understanding is a feeling I value above all else—I’ve previously stated that it’s what I love about film, the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes—and this movie gave it to me on a silver platter. It’s almost a more kindhearted version of Lake Mungo; where Alice died alone, unseen by anyone, unable to find her purpose let alone fulfill it, Tyler was able to change the past. He was able to save his sister, and his family was allowed to say goodbye. Chloe was seen and understood by her family, beautiful and tragic all at once.

Technically, the movie is outstanding. The first-person perspective captures the ghost’s emotions—its warmth, anger, and confusion—with an aching clarity. The score is operatic and evocative, amplifying the tension and sorrow. The one-location setup feels natural thanks to a screenplay that keeps the characters moving and interacting in believable ways. While some of the dialogue—particularly Ryan’s rants and Chloe’s introspections—can feel overwrought, it fits their characters and the heightened emotional tone of the story.

All in all, I wept at this movie. It was everything that always makes me cry, really: the horror of Lake Mungo—which is, to me, the scariest movie of all time—and the addition of a fraught sibling dynamic. I definitely see why some people wouldn’t like this, and it will probably be the same crowd of people who didn’t like Lake Mungo, wishing for more gore and scares and death, and that’s fair enough. To each their own. But for anyone willing to sit with its quiet, deliberate pace, I can’t recommend this movie enough.

★★★★★
9.5 out of 10
Go see Presence in theaters today!