Companion (2025) Movie Review: A Romantic Thriller Equal Parts Secluded and Sterile

There’s a reason why the name plastered all over the marketing material for “Companion” (2025) is that of Zack Creggar’s previous runaway hit “Barbarian” rather than that of its own novice director Drew Hancock. Much like Creggar’s (who here serves as producer) 2022 horror thrill-ride, “Companion” has built up, in the brief period of time between its premiere and its wider release, the aura of a film best experienced with absolutely zero pre-existing context.

Certainly, as with virtually all films, going into this one with as little detail spoiled as possible reads as the most ideal viewing scenario, but while Creggar’s flawed feature had the gonzo energy to back up its reputation of “watch this in a packed house before Twitter ruins the twists,” “Companion,” after its initial reveal (which is, of course, spoiled by the trailer), doesn’t traffic in the sort of giddy secrecy that would make its own narrative swerves quite as tantalizing. In truth, once the big twist passes—which, here, is quite early on—all you’re left with, as any Shyamalan disciple will tell you, is whatever the filmmaker then chooses to do with it.

Given the fact that “Companion,” in its first attempt to subvert expectations, nonchalantly reveals its final outcome in the opening voiceover, it becomes clear that Hancock’s focus, in true office cubicle pinup-poster fashion, is about the journey rather than the destination. With that mildly self-satisfied opening salvo, we are introduced to Iris (Sophie Thatcher) as she has her overly adorable meet-cute with the man of her dreams, Josh (Jack Quaid), in a classic act of grocery store clumsiness. If one thing should’ve been gleaned from Mimi Cave’s “Fresh,” it’s that the only pickups that go over well in a grocery store come in the form of produce, but clearly, Iris and Josh hadn’t gotten the memo.

It only takes a few seconds of this first encounter alongside Iris’s lovelorn voiceover to establish the inexplicably impassioned (if deceptively wholesome) feeling of adoration she feels for her boyfriend, which is fine enough considering Hancock immediately thrusts us into the couple’s self-driving car on its way to a remote cabin for a weekend of friendly debauchery. This weekend getaway, featuring another lovestruck couple (Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage) is sponsored by a shady Russian millionaire named Sergey (a hilariously barely-recognizable Rupert Friend), courtesy of his affair with Jack’s catty friend, Kat (Megan Suri).

That’s already a healthy enough synopsis to suggest that “Companion” could very well have been marketed without the air of secrecy, for once the film begins to dip its toes into more gnarly waters, Hancock leaves us with the sense that it has little to stand on outside that presentation of mystery. Of course, the twist is there, and how Hancock’s screenplay then weaves its implications through the resulting narrative gives his leads Thatcher and Quaid the space to explore the obvious thematic framework the film is leading with all the nuance of runway edge lights. To that end, “Companion,” much like last year’s equally flimsy “Strange Darling,” can never be called dull in its secluded thrills, even if their connecting tendons are seconds away from snapping.

There will surely be rigorous negative takes on “Companion” that are entirely motivated in their misogynistic malice by an uncharitable interpretation of what Hancock is so blatantly saying about modern relationships, but the real issue has nothing to do with what Hancock is saying; the problem—albeit not one nearly debilitating enough to make the film a total non-starter—is the rather uninspired plainness of the message riding behind the quirky diversions.

Horror-thrillers have never exactly been a convening space for thematic subtlety, but with all the offscreen talk of letting the film speak for itself, Hancock seems to have taken that advice within the film itself via multiple hackneyed divulgences about the type of people involved in this specific breed of interpersonal dysfunction. Without revealing precisely the sort of (entirely valid) commentary “Companion” is making about certain people in today’s social climate—though don’t worry, you’ll have no trouble parsing it out for yourself—there’s inherently a level of cunning required to make the dangers these people represent felt, which doesn’t really come across when every line spoken by one of these parties to the other reads like a prompt for a preemptive thinkpiece about itself.

When the time comes for the film to move past the subtext and into the form, “Companion” is far too spare and clean in its presentation, the sterile photography (perhaps appropriately, but certainly not beneficially) leaving the film too clean for its brief spurts of the gruesome to stick with any sense of impact or immersion. (The allotment of IMAX screens for the film’s theatrical run, especially at the time of year when Bong Joon-ho’s upcoming “Mickey 17” was initially slated to take those theaters, seems notably odd given this film’s distinct lack of visual ambition or scale in craft.) With due praise allotted for what Drew Hancock is saying about particular mindsets becoming more commonplace and more conducive to gross entitlement all across the world, “Companion” feels, ironically, more like a one-way conversation than a tipping point for discussion.