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Feb 06, 2025 By Scott Howard Photography by (l-R) Sophie Thatcher as Iris and Director/Writer Drew Hancock in New Line Cinema’s “COMPANION”, a Warner Bros. Pictures release Web Exclusive

In the not-too-distant future, six friends will gather at a remote lake house for a weekend of leisure. What could go wrong? Apparently a lot. As the bodies pile up, and circumstances veer wildly out of control, director Drew Hancock challenges us to consider what makes us human, what makes us monsters, and what is really the cost of trying to survive in a world where human connection seems to be dwindling in the digital age?

Drew Hancock’s new take on a toxic relationship, the hit film Companion, is currently sitting with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% as of this publication. The movie makes deft use of smash cuts and situational circumstances to cut through the horror-filled tension with a comedic knife.

Presenting Companion as a horror film nearly feels too binary as most of the movie explores many different genres as it also samples comedy, thriller, and even some rom-com tropes I’m sure all of us have experienced. Not to mention a stellar cast of young horror veterans Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets, Heretic), Jack Quaid (The Boys, Scream), Harvey Guillen (What We Do in the Shadows, Werewolves Within), Lucas Gage (Deadboy Detectives, Smile 2), Megan Suri (It Lives Inside), and Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Homeland).

Companion is Hancock’s first feature film, but don’t let that fool you. He has an extensive library of writing and directing credits on a smaller scale including notable productions like Mr. Pickles, Blue Mountain State, My Dead Ex, Faking it, Suburgatory, and even the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards. Hancock was initially the writer of Companion, but following the encouragement of fellow director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), he took the reins of this modest budget feature and really gave it his all. We got him to discuss the making of this feature, his past experiences in the media, and some exciting teases of what’s coming up in the future

I’ve spent some time in the recent days familiarizing myself with your body of work. There’s a few shows I most certainly remember from catching episodes of Mr. Pickles on Adult Swim to Blue Mountain State and surprisingly the Spike Game Awards.

Oh I apologize for that. [Laughs] [The Spike Video Game awards] was one of my most fun jobs I’ve had. We just were hanging out with Jack Black and coming up with really dumb ideas. I was a gamer. I don’t game as much as I used to, but like, yeah, that was like a dream project, because Jack is a nice guy, and video games are fun to make. I don’t know if you remember it, but the skit that I wrote describes a skit where Jack does unspeakable things with an Xbox. Yeah, that was one of my favorite things. Before Companion, that may have been my favorite thing I ever tried.

I can’t believe that was 17 years ago!

Me either! If you told me it was 10 years ago, I’d have been like, ‘Yeah, that sounds right.’ Seventeen? Holy shit.

Would you say that your writing and directing experience with those various shows informed your first time directing a feature-length film like Companion?

Definitely, yeah! I’ve made every mistake you possibly can. I feel like that’s my path here, just learning what not to do and making mistakes. I think one of my strong suits is that I’m self-aware and that I’m always constantly looking back and seeing where I failed and how I can change and become better and grow.

So when it came time to direct my first feature, I had the fears that everyone would have in that place, but I also had faith in the creative process. It’s knowing if you are open-minded and don’t treat your ideas as the best idea, you will be putting yourself in a position where everyone has a voice. You’re making it together and leaning on each other, as long as it’s all filtered through the lens of story. All decisions should be flowing into the story we’re trying to tell. If you’re all coming from it from that point of view, then you’re gonna make a great movie, and amazing things are gonna happen.

Zach Cregger (Barbarian) was initially interested in directing but was so shocked by how passionate you were about the story that he actually encouraged you to take on directing duties. How did you feel about that at the time?

Shocked. I did not expect it. You know, I’m in my forties. I’ve been around the block. I’ve been through it. So when I was writing Companion, I recognized if I had come at it saying, ‘You have to accept me as a director,’ there would be a lot of compromises you would have to make for your movie. You’re not gonna get the budget you wanted. You’re not gonna get studio interest.

From the very beginning, I just wanted to see this movie get made. I didn’t want to be a hindrance, so let’s find the best director that gets this movie made. Having Zach attached and me being such a gigantic fan of Barbarian, this process is so serendipitous.

As I was writing the spec for Companion, I had a friend who knew one of the producers and he slipped me the script for Barbarian. I thought, ‘Oh my god, this script is amazing,’ and it really reinvigorated me. It was a nice reminder as a writer to realize you could just do whatever you want. You can have a POV shift halfway through the movie and it works. If you’re being entertained by your writing, odds are other people are going to be entertained.

So when he attached himself, it was perfect. Even if he decided not to direct this film, I could use that time to just make the movie better by talking to him and polishing it. That’s what we did for five weeks. We would meet every day at his house and talk through the script. I’m very protective of my material. I just want to make sure I try to put on the page exactly what I’m thinking and what I want it to be. Some writers take shortcuts by saying a car chase happens here. I write every turn, every screech of the brake. I need to know everything. I need to know when a character moves across the room just because I need to wrap my head around the space and the pacing.

I think a quality of a great director is knowing whose moment it is because it will always change. When you’re watching a scene, there’s always going to be someplace you land. So when you’re empathizing with being a good switch within the scene, I’m talking through each scene being like, ‘Whose moment is this? How would you shoot it?’

I think just the language I’m using and how protective I was, I either scared him away from directing or he just realized that maybe I shouldn’t step back and I would be better suited as a producer. Then he could mentor me and shepherd me along the way. It worked out great for both of us because now I have Companion and I’m so grateful that he was so generous to step aside. He was also able to use that time to write Weapons and I haven’t seen it yet, but that script is phenomenal and I’ve heard it’s an amazing movie.

I noticed the movie had a very strong political undertone. What’s the big takeaway that you want audiences to have from watching this particular movie?

I just want them to have fun. I just want them to be entertained. That’s the goal. I think that’s the goal of all entertainment. You want people to just be engaged with the story, and so I want them to walk away being like, ‘That was really fun.’

It went in directions I wasn’t expecting. Even if they don’t like the movie, I like listening in on people talking about it. You can hear them enjoying the conversation about the movie. I think the best movies don’t tell you how to think; they just give you a bunch of ideas and then you can decide on your own. You could come away from a movie going, ‘I never related to Iris because she’s a murderous appliance.’

What the movie’s trying to say is maybe this is a future that we have. It’s not now, but 15 years from now, this could be humanity where a person’s phone looks like a human being. Psychologically, how does that affect you as a person? If you’re paying attention, Iris is not a first-generation robot. They’ve had this technology for years and years, so they’re used to it.

For Josh (Jack Quaid), it’s not an accident that he doesn’t react when people die. He has no emotional connections to human beings because having your phone be a human or look like a human, suddenly you’re objectifying everyone you know in the same kind of way as an internet chat room. You stop looking at the text they’re from, but there are people on the other side of that. What if it happened in your living room with people, with faces, but you’re not thinking of them as human? You’re not empathizing. You’re just kind of completely disconnected from them or empathy in general.

People come away thinking about that, what technology means to us and how it can affect us as it gets more nuanced and the boundaries between human and robot get blurred. If that’s interesting to you, I would love for you to talk about it. But it’s also cool if you left going like, ‘Oh my god, that was fucking gory and fun and I didn’t expect it.’ So at any level, if you enjoy it, I’m happy with it.

There are some great needle drops and smash cuts to really comedic moments that I loved throughout the movie on top of the horror. There are also some deft uses of romantic comedy “meet-cute” tropes to tell its story. Despite the heavy subject matter, was there a compulsion to keep things light?

I think that’s just my voice. I’m terrible at writing joke jokes. That’s why I kind of would flounder in the sitcom environment because I’m not a good joke writer. But I can take characters within circumstances and find the humor within the specific circumstance and make them comment on it. One thing I love is people who are bad at their jobs. I just love that. I like the idea of taking this big master plan of stealing $12 million and just having it be done by idiots. It’s fun to see them fail when they don’t think things through. I like the humor in that. So yeah, I’m always trying to insert that because it’s kind of telling the audience you can laugh at this, you can have fun with this because this could be you or your friends and what you would do in this situation.

In your past works you use a horror and humor lens to explore human interaction. Can you explain why you enjoy mixing those two genres to tell stories that interest you and maybe what some of your influences are?

An influence is the Coen brothers for sure—their mixing of tones. I love Fargo because it’s one of my all-time favorite movies and that could be a cartoon. The dialogue in that movie is just so ridiculous. But then you have Carter Burwell’s really weighty score and it just makes it feel like there’s a disconnect there. It’s entertaining and weird and I’ve always loved things that are just a little off. I love speeches that are raw. I like when people make mistakes, I don’t like perfection. I like playing around with rough edges, not standing everything down or keeping everything polished. Those are the kinds of movies I like and watch and write. I’m going to add humor to everything I do. So if I’m writing a horror movie, romantic comedy, or thriller, it’s going to have humor in it. That’s why I love watching Fargo.

Is this kind of like your lane now or is there a genre that you haven’t touched before that you’re really excited to try and do in the future?

I think it’s just more about the story. Honestly, if I can understand the characters and what their goal is, that’s what makes my brain tingle. It makes me want to write. So if I can come up with an interesting character and interesting circumstances, the genre can come last.

I never want to write something with a type of movie in mind. I have this character and I have this idea, what genre does it exist in? You come up with the characters and you come up with the situation and then let the genre fall there. I think that’s probably why Companion mixes genres so much is because I’m not consciously going, ‘Oh, it should be this movie.’ It just feels right.

Sometimes it feels cool to write a twist, not for the sake of writing a twist; it’s just the story kind of tells you what it needs to be and if you’re open to it, you can follow that, wherever your story’s taking you. It becomes a pain in the ass editing process for sure, because that’s when you start to realize there is a thing called tonal whiplash, where if you’re promising a tone and it comes too quickly, your audience suddenly is like, ‘What am I watching now?’

There’s a lot of editing and credit to my two editors, Josh Eithier and Brett Bachman. It was a lot of experimentation and figuring out how not to introduce a genre too early. That’s where test groups become valuable because they can help you in figuring out what’s working and what’s not.

It was very, very important to me that the movie didn’t feel like a sci-fi movie. The crew had to work like a relationship drama. I didn’t want the desaturation like Minority Report with the really bright whites and deep dark tones. I wanted it to look more like A Marriage Story. You just ground it all in what could make this story the most potent and poignant. It’s a story about a woman realizing she’s in a toxic relationship. Let’s forget she’s a robot. Let’s just treat her like she’s a woman who’s trying to escape a toxic relationship and find empowerment by discovering who she is. You’re trying with this story to get her to a place where she could escape the situation fully.

Just for reference to genres, you really leaned into that aspect. There’s a kill in the movie I’ve never seen before and it’s going to stick with me for a while, so thanks for that!

That was originally supposed to be another character’s death and I wrote that in the script and then I got to that moment and I was like, “Well, I’m not gonna be able to top that scene.” So I took it and moved it there! I have little moments during the movie where you can see the plot coming together if you watch closely. People might catch some of it in the IMAX showings. I still can’t believe that’s something that’s happening.

I know you probably can’t talk about all of your future developments, but I want to know what’s coming next for you?

When I wrote Companion, it was because I was in a place in my career where I was getting opportunities, but I really wanted to write genre stuff. That was what I loved the most so that’s where this movie originated. Now with Companion coming out and people liking it and it getting good reviews, I’m starting to get new job opportunities I want. I’ve said yes to too many things, which is a great problem to have! [Laughs]

I’m writing my next original idea that I’m not getting paid for, which is an idea I came up with before Companion started shooting. I’m very excited about it! Of my two paid jobs, one is a sequel to a movie that I can’t talk about because it hasn’t been announced yet. The other one that was announced is a short story adaptation called My Wife and I Bought a Ranch. It’s a horror movie with absurd elements to it that I’m writing right now literally today and I’m very excited about it. I read the short story and I didn’t want to overextend because I have these two other things and this short story blew my mind. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have to adapt this!’

*Photo by Drew Infante