Writer-director Drew Hancock has explained why The Boys' Jack Quaid and Yellowjackets' Sophie Thatcher were the perfect co-stars for his twisted horror romance Companion.
From the studio that brought you The Notebook and “the deranged creators of Barbarian” (as the wild trailer says), the film is shrouded in a veil of mystery. The one-minute clip, which is the only footage we've seen so far, begins with a couple sharing a romantic dinner, before things take a turn and it's revealed that Thatcher's character is actually handcuffed to her chair. (If you look closely, the anonymous chef preparing your food also has blood splatters on his white t-shirt.)
What follows is a montage of dark and increasingly violent scenes, before Thatcher's character says in voice-over: “I know this is going to sound corny, but, the moment we looked into each other's eyes, there was “just a… spark.” It ends with Quaid's character smiling menacingly as he forces Thatcher's apparently paralyzed wife to hold his hand over a candle and light her arm on fire.
“Taking someone with a baby face and giving him moments of aggression and anger is the contradiction that makes him much scarier,” the filmmaker says of Quaid in the new issue of SFX magazinewhich features the Star Trek spinoff film Section 31 on the cover and hits newsstands December 31.
“[Sophie] makes the movie,” Hancock continues. “I can't imagine anyone else in that role. Before we started filming, I knew it was a really difficult role to cast. We started auditioning a lot of good actresses (I don't want to underestimate the quality of the actresses), but there is the emotional journey that it takes that many struggled with.
“Five seconds into Sophie's performance, my heart was beating so fast because I was thinking about a future where this movie didn't have her in it.”
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If there's one thing certain about Companion, it's that viewers should prepare for a genre-bending thrill ride. According to Hancock, it's “ultimately the story of a boy and a girl's breakup,” but as the trailer suggests, this is far from a simple, heartwarming drama.
“We're selling this as a horror movie, but it's six different genres,” Hancock says. “In fact, I would put horror fourth or fifth on the list.” Talking about the predominant genre of the story would reveal half the story. “We showed the film to two discussion groups,” he adds. “One where people didn't know anything about it and one where they knew the twist. For the people who didn't know, it was like cotton candy. They didn't see it coming. You could just hear the collective amazement.”
Also starring Lukas Gage (Smile 2), Megan Suri (It Lives Inside), Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows) and Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Companion releases on January 10 in the US. , before arriving in the United Kingdom. theaters on January 31.