Companion (Drew Hancock, 2025) & Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

Sophie Thatcher is excellent as a killer bot in Drew Hancock’s Companion, a movie that works both as a portrait of toxic masculinity and (most of all) as an exciting sci-fi thriller with both comedic and horror elements.

I’m usually careful with spoilers, but it’s clear from the first shot of the movie that Iris (Thatcher) is not meant to be seen as a human being, but as a robogirl-with-benefits, who belongs to likable lad Josh (Jack Quaid), who has apparently loved her to bits after a romantic (and very funny) meet cute in a supermarket.

In the present Josh is taking his companion to a weekend getaway at the rather large villa of Russian businessman Sergey (Rupert Friend), who lives there with his gf Kat (Megan Siri), while happy lovers Eli (Harvey Guillén) and Patrick (Lukas Gage) are also invited.

Things soon get more complicated, to the effect that nobody really is who they pretend to be and also that suddenly everyone’s lives are at stake. As I don’t want to give away more spoilers, let me just say that writer and director Hancock has made a delightfully clever movie, that also makes us care emotionally about the character of Iris, who strikes us as more real than the realest of the real.

I’d say Companion is a feminist movie, as it tackles themes like male entitlement and full-blown misogyny with both wit, insight and confidence, but I would be selling it short if I’d say it was just that. It’s also a sly and cunning thriller, that’s got so many twists and turns up its sleeve that you’ll soon understand that the early reveal of who Iris is is just the set-up to everything else that is to follow.

Companion is, and I cannot stress this enough, a great movie. The actors are game, and even though it mainly takes place in a single location (and its surroundings), it is visually appealing. It’s only 97 minutes (including credits) and it’s highly original. It is basically everything we claim we want from a movie and it’s released later this week.

Go see it on the best screen available!

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

Alfred Hitchcock is, of course, known as the Master of Suspense, but did you realize that with the magnificent Shadow of a Doubt (1943) he also made a fine version of the Young Adult thriller?

I was lucky enough to catch this wonderful movie on the big screen a couple of weeks ago and since then I can’t help thinking how great Joseph Cotten and Teresa Wright are as the uncle and niece who are both named Charlie, but who, despite everything they have in common, slowly lose faith in one another until they reach the point where they become (mortal) enemies.

Hitchcock-movies are often interconnected, which is why we call him an Auteur, and a brilliant one at that. Like Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt is about starting to suspect a loved one and like Strangers on a Train (1951) it’s about Doubles who could have been Twins but end up as Opposites.

It’s like this: Uncle Charles ‘Charlie’ Oakley (Cotten) has to leave Philadelphia because the police seem to be on his trail. So he makes for the idyllic town of Santa Rosa, California, where his favorite niece Charlie Newton (Wright) lives with her family: good humored banker father Joseph (Henry Travers), caring and sentimental mother Emma (Patricia Collinge), little sister Ann (Edna May Wonacott) and even smaller brother Roger (Charles Bates). There is also family friend Herbie (Hume Cronyn), who like Joseph is an avid reader of crime stories, always thinking about how to plan a perfect murder.

It’s here where uncle Charlie wants to lay low, til the hullabaloo blows over, meanwhile putting a large amount of money into a local bank account. Charlie is loaded, and he doesn’t mind anyone knowing about it either, but where does his money come from?

Teenage Charlie becomes suspicious when her uncle destroys a news paper. Was there something in it she isn’t supposed to read? This is how it stars and this is, for me, what the movie is about: a teenage girl slowly but surely losing faith in the adult male she feels closest to in spirit, and then bearing witness to his downfall.

Written by Thornton Wilder (Our Town), Sally Benson and Hitch’s wife Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt definitely has some feminist touches. What stops it from becoming a truly feminist movie, is that in the end young Charlie replaces uncle Charlie as a role model with Jack Graham (Macdonald Carey), who is one of the policemen investigating the case, and who becomes so infatuated with young Charlie that he eventually proposes marriage. I’m sure if there was another remake of this movie that part would be written a little differently.

The movie is at its brilliant best when the two Charlies lock horns and the truth is revealed in some wonderful dialogue scenes - the movie has some extremely cynical one liners - and a point of no return is reached, and both protagonist and antagonist come to terms with the fact that their view of each other has changed for good. Or rather: for bad and for worse.

Even though most of the movie is told from young Charlie’s perspective, you do feel for uncle Charlie as well. He is a charming sociopath and we notice that for most of his life he has adored his younger namesake - the fact that she is named after her is of course a wonderful thing for someone with narcissistic tendencies - with something approaching genuine feeling. Until he understands that she has become dangerous to him and he has to get rid of her.

From that point onwards the psychological drama plays out like a slightly more conventional young woman-in-peril thriller, but it’s the Shadow of a Doubt about those final twists and turns that still kept me on the edge of my seat.

Apart from all this high drama, the movie has all those glorious Hitchcock trademarks: the superb black and white photography, the genius of camera placing and movement, the impeccable production design, art direction and costumes, the fluent editing, the mood setting and enhancing music and of course, the marvelous acting by the whole cast.

It’s worth noting that Hitch has often said Shadow of a Doubt is his own personal favorite. So see it, preferably on the big screen, if you ever get the chance…

On a personal note: after North by North West, The 39 Steps, Frenzy, Vertigo, The Birds, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window and Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt was the ninth Hitchcock movie I got to see on the big screen. So looking forward to the tenth!