This horror movie about toxic men will make you laugh. You’ll need to

In the teaser trailer for Drew Hancock’s Companion, a discomforting and provocative offer is made: a cordial invitation to experience “a new kind of love story”. But putting into words how this 97-minute mash-up of horror, lite sci-fi and sexual thriller unfolds is difficult.

It begins with the simplest of set-ups: Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) head off for a weekend with friends. But there is some fine print in this near-future world: Iris is an AI-powered companion robot, and Josh isn’t very nice. Like, actually, not nice at all. Chuck in a software tweak, and we’re somewhere between Fatal Attraction and Westworld.

Thatcher describes it as “a love story within yourself, about loving yourself, [because] for a good 60, 70 per cent of the movie, it’s about leaving a toxic relationship. Iris can’t leave it that fast because it was so co-dependent and that’s all she knew, but I think it’s more about, ‘f--- everyone else, love yourself’.”

Companion is aimed squarely at the Saturday night horror movie cinema audience: young people looking for something light, dark and thrilling. But it is also an ambitious film that wants to say something about gender politics, broken relationships and female agency.

“I liked the idea of exploring the fact that you have this [companion robot] model, Iris ... it’s for a very specific type of man, and it’s not exactly your girl next door,” Thatcher says. “She has her quirks, and they’re advanced enough that she is kind of for the film-bro type, where he’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen her in movies. Oh, that’s the ’60s idealised woman.’

“What’s interesting is that in creating that, what kind of man would want that? Kind of an incel man that you think the ’60s [created] the perfect kind of woman, because of the very tailored, very classic look. Thinking about that was a head f--- to some extent because [how she is dressed is] not how she would dress herself.”

Work on the film began in July 2023. It took almost a year – and a production pause because of the actors’ and writers’ strikes – to finish it. In the gaps, Thatcher, who had established a high profile on the television series Yellowjackets, also filmed Heretic, a more conventional horror movie in which Hugh Grant drips menace.

Sophie Thatcher (right) with Chloe East in Heretic.

When the script for Companion surfaced, the 24-year-old Chicago-born actor met the film’s writer/director, Drew Hancock, in a cafe in the fashionable LA suburb of Los Feliz. (In Sydney, think Newtown; in Melbourne, Fitzroy.) Realising they shared a passion for music – Thatcher had appeared in a music video for the band Pavement, and Hancock was a fan – their conversation moved on to film soundtracks they both loved.

“Then we started hating on every movie that’s out right now, which maybe isn’t the most positive, inspiring thing in the world, but it turns out that we hate a lot of the same stuff, and I think that is a very good sign,” Thatcher says, laughing.

Sophie Thatcher says she and director Drew Hancock bonded over shared dislikes. “It turns out that we hate a lot of the same stuff.″⁣Credit: NYT

“We could tell it was just a very natural back and forth, and I knew immediately, while talking to him, on top of everything that’s so interesting and exciting about the project that I already knew, I just wanted to work with him because we hate the same things. More than that, he’s very kind, and I could tell there was something right there.”

As Josh heads off for his weekend with Eli (Harvey Guillén), Eli’s boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage), Sergey (Rupert Friend) and Sergey’s girlfriend Kat (Megan Suri), we discover that Iris is a companion robot who has been packaged to suit Josh’s tastes. As the film progresses, and their relationship takes a darker turn, the real Iris begins to emerge.

“She was figuring out on the spot [who she was], and as she went, the second half of her arc was, a lot of the time, figured out on the day: exploring new things, exploring mannerisms, exploring her stiffness, and maybe her quirks,” says Thatcher. “You can plan it, you can have an idea, and I think I very much had an idea of who she was at the beginning, but there was this … journey within myself as an actor, finding her while we were shooting.”

‘Every woman, to some extent, feels like maybe we don’t have full control of our bodies because people in authority are making it that way.’

Sophie Thatcher

Challenging too was getting a sense of Iris’ mechanics, Thatcher says. “Mapping the technicalities, finding out where she stands within how she views herself and how she views Josh ... just kind of keeping a road mark of that throughout the story. She’s a little stiff. She can be sexy, but sometimes she doesn’t know how to move her body because she’s a f---ing ’bot.”

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the film’s mutually destructive dynamics is that in the wider world of Los Angeles, the perception of Quaid is an overwhelmingly positive one. He’s the progeny of Hollywood royalty: the son of actors Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid.

Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid in Companion.Credit: Warner Bros.

His performances as vigilante Hughie Campbell in the hit Amazon series The Boys and as Starfleet lieutenant Brad Boimler in Star Trek: Lower Decks (and, briefly but brilliantly, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) won him universally positive notices.

“He’s f---ing amazing,” says Thatcher. “He’s the polar opposite of his character. We shared our playlists, we had some conversations, and there was this immediacy of a connection, but then also within the reality of their relationship, it’s awkward, [so] there was natural awkwardness.

“I think we didn’t plan too much, and we had to just … day by day, see what happened because this movie’s a beast. But I couldn’t have asked for anyone better. He’s so kind and would always apologise to the crew.”

How we perceive art when it is wrapped around social commentary has shifted in different ways over the decades. When Halloween was released in 1978, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode was a textbook victim. The conclusion of that film series managed to flip the script, allowing her to fight back in a manner more reflective of an era in which female agency could be seen without getting lost in feminist story tropes.

Companion, too, can be seen purely in terms of its techno-horror – though Iris is granted a more equitable fight than her female counterparts in the 1970s horror genre – but it can also be seen in a very political context, about Josh’s toxic masculinity, and the kind of official coercive controls that exist in parts of the world, including, alarmingly, parts of modern-day America.

“The movie is really about control,” says Thatcher. “And maybe in a way that people can relate to because it’s in so many relationships. But then also, every woman, to some extent, feels like maybe we don’t have full control of our bodies because people in authority are making it that way and making it seem like we don’t have control.

Sophie Thatcher’s Iris has to learn to love herself in Companion.Credit: Warner Bros.

“Iris is a good example of someone who takes control. She has her own autonomy, she has her own free will,” says Thatcher. “Being in a Trump America now, I think that’s going to be really resonant. And I love how horror movies now are taking these really universal topics and talking about them, but [also] bringing people to the cinema.

“Maybe it’s not an overt conversation, but it’s there, and it’s still making you think. Not everything can be Heretic, where it gets purely philosophical, but you’re seeing this, and you’re seeing the toxicity, and I think a lot of it is a lot more real and a lot less genre than we think it is.”

At times Companion is full of frightening twists and turns. At others, it is laugh-out-loud funny. It speaks to Hancock’s script that the two find balance, and perhaps his understanding that the audience – certainly the younger demographic – have come to expect that from the genre.

“[Laughter] feels like the release that you need in certain moments,” Thatcher says. “I have found myself, not talking about anything super specific in my life, but when I’ve had really dark moments, I find that’s when I can be my funniest. You kind of just let go. It’s almost like the worst has happened, that there’s a looseness.

“When something takes itself too seriously, you’re not going to take it seriously. There’s a disconnect,” Thatcher says. “Harvey [Guillén, who plays Eli] is such a beautiful example of that in this movie. Really dark times bring out this need for humour. Even if it’s very dark humour, it’s still bringing out some kind of lightness and some kind of release. You need it.”

That said, there are also times in the film where it comes close to crossing the line in terms of visceral gore. For a film that seems to have caught a couple of genres in its net, that is perhaps the one that is toughest – visually – to handle.

“It goes very far in this movie, but it also goes to show the lack of care within men, and again, that feeling of trying to dominate and control, so I think it gets very visceral in that way because it has to go far,” Thatcher says. “If it stayed too safe, then it wouldn’t get the point across as deeply.”

In physical terms, Thatcher worked with a stunt double and, when she needed to, leant into that. “There’s so much violence in the movie, and I’m pretty surprisingly used to it, as an actor, where I feel a little disillusioned by it because I’ve done so many genre pieces,” Thatcher says. “But [one] scene, watching that, was very, I’m not going to say triggering, but it is so abusive, and I don’t think, if we had played it way too safe with some of that, again, I don’t think the point would have come across as well.”

Sophie Thatcher and Lukas Gage in Companion. Credit: Warner Bros.

What is certain is that as the actor and character part ways, a fragment of Iris remains lodged in Sophie’s psyche.

“That’s a great, great question, and I feel like we do our best as actors, or I try my best, to kind of rid myself of the character afterwards,” Thatcher says. Natalie Scatorccio from Yellowjackets is tough, she says, “because, of course, it’s a TV show and TV’s a different beast because you have to keep going back to that.

“But with Iris, I think there’s a sense of self-sufficiency,” Thatcher adds. “I have confidence in myself as an actor, but it wavers because I’m so young, and I am still learning so much, but this was an entirely different role – nothing I ever would have expected playing – so I think that drive and that self-sufficiency and confidence I got from her.

“We shot our last scene on our last day, and it’s always interesting leaving a project when you’re shooting in order and kind of growing with the character. Having to stop, wait six months, shoot another movie, and then go back to this movie was daunting and really exhausting. But to end with that final scene felt like a little ribbon, a little icing on the cake.”

Companion is in cinemas from January 30.

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