After watching what is essentially Drew Hancock’s directorial debut, with his only other foray into directing coming nearly 20 years ago - a 2006 9 minute short collaboration with the iconic musical comedy duo, Tenacious D (made up of Jack Black and Kyle Gas), that features appearances from Michael Keaton and a young Justin Roiland pre-Rick and Morty (and pre-criminality) - I’m left with more than enough reason to believe he’ll be another stand-out from this new wave of writer/directors that have hit Hollywood. Companion could not be further from the Tenacious D short that preceded it in Hancock’s filmography, though, as it stylistically and tonally falls much more into the realm of a previous stand out from distributor Boulderlight Pictures, Barbarian, directed by Zach Creggers - who also produced Companion - which was, in my opinion, the best horror film of 2022. Both films present major twists from early on, and continue to present new turns in said twists to usher in a new narrative sequence. Whilst Companion doesn’t necessarily pull off all the narrative twists and turns in the same way that I felt Cregger’s Barbarian did, it may actually do a better job at blending its moments of humour into scenes without disrupting the overall tone of the film - although, perhaps that’s because I took Barbarian a bit more seriously, thus being caught more off guard by the rare moments of humour within it. The highest praise I can give is to the casting of the film, as almost every member of Companion’s reasonably small cast truly deliver in their performances, very likely aiding in (if not saving) the twists presented not falling flat. This is not to say that Hancock’s story is weak by any means, merely that he takes some narrative risks that really rely on the actors to sell the reveal. As, many times, its the actors’ own reactions that usher us into a new narrative sequence (for instance, their character realizing something at the same time as us), and a bad performance can make the entire reveal flop - there is a very thin line to walk between Fincher and Shyamalan. To close off, I think both leads Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid (son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid) have very bright futures in the film industry. I was familiar with both from their previous work on TV - Thatcher on HBO’s Yellowjackets and Quaid the star of Prime’s The Boys - and felt they both had strong crossovers onto the silver screen (although it’ll take a while to not feel embarrassed for how many times Jack Quaid had to use what has to be one of the cringiest pet names in the long history of cinema romances: “beep boop”).

8/10 - Amir Majeed