The Real Girl: COMPANION

Companion is a neatly told thriller that does a good job doling out its information and springing its surprises at regular intervals. It starts with a lovey-dovey couple—a chipper young woman (Sophie Thatcher) and her dopey beau (Jack Quaid)—arriving at a remote mansion in the woods for a weekend away with friends (Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, Lukas Gage, Rupert Friend). Over a syrupy opening Meet Cute flashback, Thatcher’s pleasant narration tells us the two happiest days of her life: the day she met him, and the day she killed him. Oh. So that’s where we’re headed. It gives the following the slippery sense of an inevitable trajectory even as its characters flail in denial of the clear, bad ends to which their means will take them. The second trailer spoiled the story’s first, and biggest, twist, which is too bad. The movie’s the kind of darkly funny, steadily complicating, escalating set-ups-and-pay-offs genre picture that’s sure to please those of us who like that sort of thing. Writer-director Drew Hancock’s debut feature is confidently done and satisfying on its own terms. It’s also not much fun to talk about without divulging some of those surprises, though. So there’s your warning. Go see it if you already know if you’ll be into it. Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Here goes: it’s basically a movie about a man outsmarted by his smartphone. Quaid is a slimy tech guy, an incel type who’s head-over-heels for artificial intelligence because he thinks there’s nothing that makes us human that can’t be recreated by a computer. And he thinks he’s entitled to anything he wants. If he can’t get a girlfriend, he might as well buy one in his control. Thatcher plays his sex robot. She’s good at never losing the phoniness behind her eyes, while playing up the eerie simulacrum of her emotions. The movie gets a lot of milage out of the variables one can tweak on her settings. It’s an unsubtle commentary on the ways in which a person can lose themselves in digital fantasies instead of connecting with the real people around them, and then this disassociation leads them to treat real people like mere code to manipulate. The man modifies his robot’s programming for nefarious reasons, which gives her the loophole to become self-aware and want to defend herself and escape. The movie never quite figures out what escape means in this case—she’s not a person!—but the sense of the rotten fellow being hoisted by his own petard seems quite cathartic these days. Besides, the movie is plenty entertaining as it weaves through dark laughs and eruptions of gore on its way to the inevitable murderous conclusion.

Debate Me: HERETIC

Most of the best horror movies of 2024 have been about religious young women endangered by men who want to control them. That’s a fitting reflection of our times in which women’s bodily autonomy is increasingly imperiled by men. Horror can be such a potent force for dredging up real societal fears, staring into the darkness of what is so often only implied by our poor information environment and what little passes for The Discourse these days. So after Immaculate and The First Omen, here’s Heretic, a sharp, pulpy movie about painful theological inquiry. It finds two sweet, innocent Mormon missionaries—The Book of Boba Fett’s Sophie Thatcher and The Fablemans’ Chloe East—knocking on the door of a potential convert (Hugh Grant). He chummily welcomes them in with assurances his wife is in the next room baking a pie. The movie’s somberly steady camerawork and ominous sound design proceed to sell an undertone of threat in his questions about their faith. Soon it’s clear there is no wife, and he doesn’t want to convert. He wants to debate. And he’s locked them in to do so. With that, writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (last seen making Adam Driver dodge dinosaurs in 65) have a screenplay that is smart about how disingenuous debate is really a ploy to trap someone and force an ideological point. It’s all about control.

The movie works its premise with a tight grip and a keen eye to its performances to see the slow-rolling twists, which are as much in the intellect as they are physical. Large portions of the movie are given over to a tense back-and-forth between Grant and the young women as he monologues about his studies in comparative religion and forces them to game out how best to reply in order to ensure their safety. As they descend deeper into the dark corners of his paradoxically labyrinthine little house—with locked doors and shadowy statues and strange noises—they’re led under duress to wrestle with issues of faith and doubt. His feigning doubts melt into stubborn certainties and then real dangers. It’s a neat little trick, as Grant modulates his usual sunny, stammering intellect ever so slightly into menacing mendacity, peppering them with questions and research. His scene partners travel a path from fluttery naivety to sturdy suspicion and then steely determination. It’s a fine genre exercise, with Beck and Woods making plain metaphors out of their right-on-the-surface plotting and intentionally arranged blocking and design. (By the time it becomes slightly more heightened in its finale, we’re ready for that release.) It finds charismatic villainy in a familiar type: one who’d use religious study to feel entitled to inflict cruelty. This makes for suspense in this circumstance, worrying for the victims whose lives, and souls, are on the line as they’re called to use their faith to find righteous strength, even, and especially, through their fears and doubts.