Companion (2025) Brilliant Sci-Fi Dystopian Horror
“The days of you controlling me are over”
A short, sweet and uber spoiler free review even by own high standards in appreciating a film rather than spoiling it and quite simply, don’t read any reviews (aside from the 11 minute opening dissection that follows below) and don’t watch any trailers as it spoils the movie in seconds. Just watch without any preconceptions as to what this film may or may not be other than a part science fiction and part dystopian horror from Drew Hancock in his debut film, and what a spectacular debut it is too.
The opening 11 minutes:
Following sparse production credits and now against a black screen, the film’s opening narration begins:
“Most of the time it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like there’s this thick, black cloud, covering everything”
We now see the first colour of the film and shot from below as a rolling camera moves ever closer, a strip light in a supermarket.
“Like we see the world, but we don’t really see the world, you know?”
We cut to the figure of a young lady, shot from behind and with her back to camera, walking slowly between well stocked shelves in the aisle of a supermarket.
“We’re all just stumbling around. Directionless. No sense of meaning”
With a change of camera angle and a distinctive yellow and red coloured sign for “Fresh Dairy” behind her, we are now formally introduced to the star of the coming show and namely “Iris” (Sophie Thatcher) still walking through the aisles of the supermarket and for the first time in the coming film, smiling.
“No sense of purpose. I know that might sound super depressing, but honestly, I think that’s a good thing. Because it makes us appreciate the other times”
We now see a close-up of a batch of ripe peaches.
“Those brief, transcendent moments when the lights flicker on, the black clouds part, and you see the world for what it really is”
Cutting to Iris now sniffing a single peach, her eyes are immediately drawn to a man on the other side of the aisle staring at her, transfixed by her beauty. That man will soon announce himself as “Josh” (Jack Quaid) and when he’s discovered staring at Iris looks down immediately and can only emit a very embarrassed exclamation of “oh”. But as the narration continues, Iris is smiling once again.
“And suddenly there’s meaning. Suddenly there’s purpose”
Taking a deep breath, Josh walks into the same aisle as Iris and now standing opposite her, appears to say the beginning of that cliched and lame joke of “Do you come here often…” but is stopped midway as picking a single orange from the rack to his right, the remainder tumble from the shelf onto the supermarket floor! They both roar with laughter.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll experience this once in your lifetime. For me, it happened twice. The first was the day I met Josh. And the second, the day I killed him”
We cut to pink, blood splattered opening credits and quickly to Josh urging Iris to wake up as they’re travelling (seemingly by a driverless car) and more obviously lost on their way to his friend’s remote cabin for the weekend. As the camera cuts between the two smiling lovers, Iris wonders how long she’s been asleep and struggling to fully awaken, admits to enjoying a rather beautiful dream about her beau sat opposite her. Not the “sexy times” Josh was hoping she was dreaming about, but the day they first met in the supermarket and beaming happily she asks “Remember how perfect it was?”. Josh responds with a smile before they both worry that despite following the car’s GPS they appear to be hopelessly lost, but a quick camera change framing both of the lovers together now rather than separately in the car, they spot the huge cabin on the hill in the near distance. Swooping out of the car, director Drew Hancock’s camera now moves toward the cabin and their ultimate destination before veering left and showcasing a huge lake within easy walking distance of the cabin as “Companion” is displayed in a pink coloured decorative font.
Now arrived and walking toward his friend’s description of a “little rustic cabin in the woods”, Josh strides ahead of Iris as we see that this little cabin is anything but and instead, a huge, sprawling mansion style property high on a hill and in the middle of nowhere. With Josh yards ahead and now out of frame, the camera finds Iris alone and panicking as Josh turns to his girlfriend and seeing her distress, he addresses Iris with a friendly if blunt statement “Come on Iris, you know you can’t lie to me” as she worries aloud that she’ll say or do something “stupid” and crucially, she knows his great friend Kat hates her. Josh reassures her, firstly, that everything will be OK, everyone is waiting to greet them and anyway, “Kat hates everybody”. Still panicking, Iris exclaims that she desperately doesn’t want to “screw everything up” however Josh calmy reassures her again and calling her “Beep-Boop” for the first time of many in the coming film, smiles and suggests she just relax, be happy, and smile.
Answering the doorbell of the mansion, “Kat” (Megan Suri) is overjoyed to see Josh has finally arrived and Iris, a little less so! With a glass of wine in hand and a huge hug for her friend, Kat embraces Josh like a long lost friend and cannot avert her gaze from him until at his urging, she looks at Iris who greets her with an overly friendly smile and greeting to which Kat deadpans a disinterested and icily cold response of utter disdain. Following a brief and awkward silence on the doorstep, Josh and Iris are greeted far more warmly inside the mansion by firstly “Patrick” (Lukas Gage) busily cooking in the kitchen before “Eli” (Harvey Guillén) quickly joins, greeting his friend Josh with a warm, drunken hug and by calling him “Joshyboy” and lastly, lingering on the staircase of the mansion with cigar in hand we find “Sergey” (Rupert Friend) full of greetings for his friend Josh and instantly and utterly besotted with Iris who he cannot take his eyes away from. With Sergey awkwardly staring at her, Iris nervously compliments his self proclaimed “lake house” with Sergey jokingly replying that although he doesn’t own the lake he does though own the 17 miles of woodland that surround his opulent mansion and offering both her and Josh a welcoming drink, Iris makes her excuses and requests a refreshing shower after their car journey. Leaving the kitchen and ascending the nearby staircase, Sergey’s eyes follow Iris every step of the way.
We cut to Iris humming to herself as she unpacks for the weekend in a beautiful bedroom overlooking the lake. As director Hancock rolls his camera slowly toward the ever emptying suitcase, we finally rest on a close-up of the remaining contents: a washbag, a couple of towels and sitting atop these towels, a long USB adapter, before we quickly cut to Iris in the shower and almost immediately, her wiping away of the condensation covering a bathroom mirror and a melancholic young lady looking at her reflection as she implores herself to “smile” and “act happy”. This final vision of the scene merges with the audio of downstairs and a smiling Iris listening to Patrick describe his first meeting with the love of his life, Eli. Cleverly, the director slowly rolls his camera behind Iris and around the dining table but always with Patrick and Eli the centre of attention as Patrick holds court and his description of meeting “the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life”. Holding hands with Eli, we now cut back and forth between the two men and Iris as she asks with a smile “When did you know he was the one?”. Patrick, through beaming smiles, simply states that something inside of him “clicked into place” when he met Eli and Iris, full of wonder and joy and smiles for such a heartwarming story responds in kind and “It’s like there’s this piece of you that you didn’t even know was broken, and then suddenly, it’s fixed” and we cut to a flashback of a smiling Iris and an overjoyed Josh meeting for the first time in the supermarket.
Immediately back to the present day, Iris is now smiling at the thought of her first meeting with Josh as he returns her smiles around the dining table before Iris admits she’s so in love with the man beside her she’ll do anything to make him happy. Cutting to Josh he’s still smiling, but now more of an embarrassed smile as he clearly wasn’t expecting Iris being this open in front of his friends and Iris, her own smile fading somewhat, looks back at Josh now looking down at the floor and arguably avoiding her gaze. He eventually smiles back, but it’s now a completely empty smile, mirrored now too by Iris whose smile has disappeared and in its place is a bewildered young lady, lost, in a room full of strangers…
Steer clear of trailers or reviews if possible and treat yourself to Companion with a clean slate sometime.
One of my favourite films of 2025 so far.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon