Companion’s jaw-dropping twists and turns make a red-hot thriller, but it’s best seen totally cold

Companion is the kind of original and inventive thriller that comes around all too rarely – but the top-level twists hit hardest by going in spoiler-free, writes Leigh Paatsch.

With an original, clever and challenging thriller with twists that will leave you gasping, and an erotic drama with Nicole Kidman at the top of her game, it’s a hot line-up for new cinema releases.

COMPANION (MA15+)

Sophie Thatcher as Iris in Companion.

Director: Drew Hancock (feature debut)

Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri

★★★★

A love too good, and a lie too bad

Are you one of those disillusioned cinemagoers who sometimes finds yourself wondering where all the fresh, original, challenging and distinctly entertaining movies have gone?

Companion will put an end to your internal complaints, and demand that you take external action immediately.

Just go see it as soon as you can: Companion ticks all the boxes that most mainstream movies can’t be bothered marking.

Your reward for showing up will be a clever, deviously treacherous and markedly unsettling thriller that earns every gasp, shock, chill and laugh on its own admirably inventive merits.

There is just one unavoidably problematic proviso that must be observed to maximise your enjoyment of all that Companion has to offer: the movie must be seen as free of any advance knowledge of its contents as possible.

There are at least two big twists nested within the Companion plot – one of them a stunning storytelling about-face – that will generate an insane level of heat if experienced “cold”.

This review will avoid straying anywhere near these sudden revelations, for Companion is an infinitely superior movie when its potent ability to blindside an entire audience remains intact.

(If I haven’t got to you too late, please avoid the most recent trailers for Companion: they give most of the game away.)

Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher in Companion.

So here is what little you vaguely need to know about Companion’s plot.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) has found the cliched “man of her dreams”, Josh (Jack Quaid). In fact, the serenely serendipitous way they meet – in a supermarket aisle as a display of stacked fruit collapses – seems like a work of elegantly composed romantic fiction.

A little later in their union, Josh invites Iris on a weekend away with his friendship circle, some of whom are not exactly enthused by his choice of new girlfriend.

If you’re already sensing the whole Josh-and-Iris thing is too good to be true, you are absolutely on the right track. However, you won’t be guessing how bad things will turn out to be between this couple once the true nature of their relationship is revealed.

Once the cunningly concealed and highly combustive contents of Companion catch alight, the movie’s fiery unpredictability simply scorches the viewer into submission. What a way to burn.

Companion is in cinemas now

BABYGIRL (MA15+)

Harris Dickinson and Nicole Kidman in Babygirl.

★★★★½

General release

What an absolute travesty it is that Nicole Kidman did not make the cut for this year’s Best Actress Oscar nominations for her astonishing work in Babygirl. At the very least, her fearless display as a top-flight CEO who takes a bottom-feeding interest in a lowly male intern at her company ranks as one of the bravest performances in recent memory.

The movie itself matches the raw, wounded and disconcerting brilliance displayed by its leading lady every step of the way. The key here is that writer-director Halina Reijn never goes too far in mining the shock value of this material, even when Kidman’s married, moneyed mother-of-two Romy and her young exploited employee Samuel (Harris Dickinson) keep crossing the line in terms of acceptable behaviour in the boardroom, the bedroom and beyond.

While some will definitely be taken aback by the movie’s matter-of-fact handling of the complicated sexual charge detonated between its protagonists, a powerful feeling that there can and will be consequences for Romy’s actions never once subsides. The collateral damage left in the wake of this ill-advised tryst – as experienced by the likes of Romy’s oblivious husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) – is just as striking as the actions that cause it.

A movie that doesn’t play nice, but is definitely playing for keeps. Unforgettable stuff if you’re feeling game enough.

FLIGHT RISK (M)

Mark Wahlberg as pilot Daryl in Flight Risk. Picture: Lionsgate

★★★

General release

The blueprint for this tight, tension-riddled affair sat on the shelf for years with a reputation as one of Hollywood’s better unproduced scripts. Enter Mel Gibson, unfolding his director’s chair for the first time in a decade. The movie has now been made and Flight Risk delivers just the kind of bumpy ride that all fans of the plane-in-peril thriller would be hoping for. It ain’t a classic. But it ain’t a dud, either. The schematics are budget-airline basic.

Michelle Dockery in Flight Risk. Picture: Lionsgate

You’ll be boarding a tinny little small-propeller carrier piloted by a seasoned Texan fly-boy named Daryl (Mark Wahlberg). There are only two confirmed passengers taking the trip across the Alaskan wilderness: Winston (Topher Grace) is a shifty money mover for the mob who is about to testify against his bosses, and Madelyn (Michelle Dockery) is the US marshal doing her best to ensure he gets to court on time. Naturally, there will be events occurring along the way that may cancel Winston’s big debut as a star witness. Some of them are kind of ridiculous, and a few are genuinely, pulse-poundingly alarming.

While you’re not missing anything too special if you choose to wait to catch this when it hits streaming in a few months’ time, the sub-90-minute run time and Gibson’s nimble control of proceedings ensures Flight Risk won’t crash-land in a cinema setting.

Originally published as Companion’s jaw-dropping twists and turns make a red-hot thriller, but it’s best seen totally cold