Interview: Companion writer/director Drew Hancock on subverting expectations and navigating twists

New Line Cinema, the studio that brought you The Notebook, the unhinged creators of Barbarian, and writer/director Drew Hancock cordially invite you to experience a new kind of love story…

Companion.

Companion, which makes for “biting viewing, gleefully playing at once with the dynamics of power and sex as it toys with our own expectations” (as stated in our review), is a twisted and unexpected take on what it means to find your soulmate in a digital age, and as it gears up to shock and entertain audiences in equal measure from this weekend, The AU Review caught up with creator Hancock to celebrate.

Speaking to our own Peter Gray, the filmmaker touched on the origins of his story, navigating the twists of his story, and what it is that makes us like Jack Quaid so much, even when we know we shouldn’t.

Congratulations on Companion.  I walked into this knowing nothing.  I hadn’t seen the trailer, so this was a big surprise.  Where did the original idea stem from? You have the physical manifestation of the lonely hearts, so to speak, there’s AI and sexbot hedonism…

Yeah, I mean, every project is totally different.  You never know what that seed of the idea will be.  Sometimes it can be one single image.  Sometimes it’s a character.  Sometimes it’s a scene.  For this one, the complete, fully baked log line just came to me immediately.  Some couples go to a cabin in the middle of the woods and one of them discovers they’re a robot.  And then, you know, things go south, and you take that horror structure and a character gets picked off every 10 pages.

But what I didn’t have in that moment was Iris being the protagonist.  My initial instinct was to make Iris the antagonist, like the AI-gone-wrong story that we’ve seen 1000 times.  It’s just immediately where my brain was going.  It wasn’t until I started writing the movie and fleshing out who she is, and I’m getting to the scene where she’s outside the house and she’s worried about meeting Josh and his friends, and suddenly I’m tapping into this really relatable fear that I had when meeting partners’ friends and families, and how alienating that is.  Immediately, I’m like, “Wait a minute.  I’m relating to the robot more than I’m relating to the human characters.”

I put the whole project on pause.  Could I tell the story through the point of view of the robot? Is that doable? To get an audience to relate to the robot, and not the humans? As soon as I had that, and I didn’t know if I could pull it off, I knew that I had something kind of original and fresh.  I just took that idea and ran with it.

I’m going to say you pulled it off.  The line “Go to sleep” now has a much different meaning.  But when you are realising that Iris is going to be who we follow and care for, did that make it easier to change Jack Quaid’s character into not necessarily the nicest guy?

That’s always a tough needle to thread.  I knew that was going to be tough after I’d finish the script, because it’s a tall ask.  He’s saying really unlikeable things immediately.  He’s telling a woman to smile and act happy right out of the gate.  There’s no version of that where that’s coming from a good place.  So finding someone that could say that and it doesn’t feel malicious…this person doesn’t know any better.  This person is maybe just a little bit of a doofus.  He’s like a man-child, and not that Jack has Josh within him, but the first time I met him I knew he had the charisma that we need.  He can make unlikability likeable, and that’s exactly what needed with Josh.

Well, I feel like after Scream we should all be a bit weary with Jack Quaid.  But he really is the nicest guy.  When I was watching it, it never occurred to me that there was something more sinister going on with him.  I was under the impression that the house was going to reveal a lot of secrets.  And it was so perfectly executed.  And without saying anything, there’s obviously reveals later on that are so great.  Without giving too much away, did that also naturally progress for you?

Yeah.  Obviously the movie is going to hinge on a giant twist.  I knew there was going to be a moment where she discovers what she is, and that’s also the moment that the audience discovers what she is.  But when you’re writing it, I knew I had a choice to make.  Is this a third act reveal? Is this midpoint? Is it in the first act? Is it the first five pages? You have to make that decision, and then as soon as I knew, I didn’t want it to turn into one of those movies that’s marketed as a “twist movie”.  Because you watch those differently, right? You’re watching them not immersing yourself in the story.  You’re thinking (like) you’re trying to get ahead of the twist.  Every decision a character is making, you’re looking at it under a microscope.  I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, so I knew that I would make it a first act reveal.  We’d get a little bit of that, “What’s going to happen?”

And then a beautiful thing happens when you present it as this big twist, and it’s revealed earlier than a lot of people think it’s going to be revealed.  Suddenly they don’t know what this movie is now.  It could go in so many different directions.  And that’s the fun of it.  So if people know the twist or don’t know the twist, everyone’s going to enjoy it the exact same way.  It’s like the slight of hand.  My robot reveal is kind of hiding all the other little twist and turns and swerves.

Well, we had our cake and we ate it, and it was great!

Thank you so much.

Companion is screening in Australian theatres from January 30th, 2025.

Peter Gray

Seasoned film critic. Gives a great interview. Penchant for horror. Unashamed fan of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jason Momoa.