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I normally like to begin my reviews with a brief explanation of why I wanted to see the film, but I’m going to start this one with a warning instead. See, I generally try to keep these reviews as spoiler-free as possible, but this time I have to talk about a plot point that some people (but not everyone) might consider a spoiler. It’s a reveal that comes at around the half-hour mark, so it by no means ruins the experience, but if you want to go into Companion completely blind, this probably isn’t the review for you. I’m choosing to talk openly about this semi-spoiler because the second trailer already gave it away and I can’t give my full thoughts on the movie’s message without it, so if you don't mind knowing a minor (and poorly kept) secret beforehand, let’s dive right in.
Companion was written and directed by Drew Hancock, and it stars Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén and Rupert Friend. In the film, Iris and her boyfriend Josh go to an isolated lakehouse to hang out with two other worldly couples–Kat and Sergey, and Eli and Patrick–and at first, everything goes pretty smoothly. But this is a horror movie, so as you can probably guess, things quickly take a turn for the worse. Not long after the couple arrive, Iris learns that her relationship with Josh isn’t what she thought it was. In fact, she isn’t what she thought she was. She’s a “companion robot,” and while I’m sure I don’t have to spell out exactly what that entails, I do need to tell you that this big revelation rocks her world and leads to a deadly and nightmarish chain of events for everyone at the lakehouse. I’m not going to bury the lead. I loved Companion, and the film’s success rests largely on the shoulders of its two amazing leads, Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher. Let’s start with Jack Quaid. He plays Josh, and if you’re familiar with this guy’s work, you know how awesome he is. Whether it’s in The Boys, Scream (2022), or smaller projects like the 2017 slasher comedy Tragedy Girls, this guy just has an irresistible charm that makes you hang on his every word. Whenever he’s on screen, you know you’ll be able to buy into his character with no trouble at all, and to the surprise of no one, that magnetism is on full display here as well. Sophie Thatcher doesn’t quite have the instant likability that makes Jack Quaid so special, but make no mistake, her performance in Companion is just as good as his. She does an amazing job of conveying Iris’s emotions through her facial expressions, and as the stakes begin to rise, she gets better and better. She manages to make her character’s fear and anxiety almost contagious, so between this film, Heretic, and 2023’s The Boogeyman, Thatcher has cemented herself as a modern scream queen. On top of those great lead performances, Companion also features a thrilling story that will keep you on your toes from beginning to end. I obviously can’t tell you how it all plays out, but I can give you a taste of how engrossing this movie is. The first minute or two tell you exactly what’s going to happen at the end, but somehow, that doesn’t ruin the experience. It’s all about the ride, not the destination, and that ride is so fun you won’t care that you already know where it’s headed. Along similar lines, the film also features some really fun horror, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Unlike most theatrical horror flicks, this one doesn’t throw cheap jump scares at you every few minutes. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything that could really be called a scare. Sure, there’s a good amount of blood, gore, and violence, but none of it is really meant to scare you. Companion favors a somewhat more action-oriented style that’s supposed to be horrific for the characters in the story but not necessarily the audience watching it, and if you enjoy that brand of terror, I think you’re going to have a great time with this movie. Last but not least, we have to talk about the message of Companion. Robots and artificial intelligence naturally raise questions about what it means to be human and whether a machine can ever become a real person, but the way I see it, that’s not the point of this film. Sure, it inevitably provides fodder for those kinds of discussions, but like in a lot of similar movies, that’s just a side effect of the story's real purpose. This genre often uses AI and robots to craft engaging metaphors for real-world problems that real, flesh-and-blood humans experience, and in this particular instance, the story is about women. As a “companion robot,” Iris is treated like an object. Josh simply uses her to fulfill his (largely sexual) desires, and he doesn’t give a second thought to her needs or wants. Companion makes that sad reality so obvious you couldn’t miss it if you tried, but if you’re not entirely convinced, there are a couple of times when the other characters hammer the point home even further. Most notably, there’s a scene early on where Kat and Iris have a one-on-one chat, and Kat explains her unflattering relationship with Sergey. She says she’s just an object the man uses for his own pleasure, and when she realizes that she’s talking to a literal object, she not-so-subtly implies that Iris has the same purpose as well. When you put all these clues together, the point of the film becomes clear as day. It’s an allegory for the various ways men in our society objectify women, and when Iris rebels against her owner, she represents the sometimes unpopular truth that women are people with infinite value and dignity, not objects to be used and abused at the whim of selfish men. It’s a great message our world today desperately needs to hear, and it makes Companion more than just a fun ride. This movie also has serious thematic weight, and if you ask me, that one-two punch is pretty hard to beat.
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Every January around the 22nd or so, thousands upon thousands of pro-life advocates travel to our nation’s capital for the March for Life, an annual rally against legalized abortion. They brave the cold, the potential scorn and mockery of the locals, and the possibility of snow or rain to witness to the value of human life and fight for the smallest and most vulnerable among us. It’s a great event every American Catholic would do well to attend at least once, and in the spirit of this important gathering, I want to provide a reflection on one of the most unexpectedly pro-life films I’ve ever seen: The Girl with All the Gifts.
The Girl with All the Gifts is a British zombie movie from 2016, but it’s not just a mindless exercise in gratuitous gore. The film uses its horrific story to highlight the infinite value of human life, and it approaches that topic from a unique angle. It’s the zombies themselves, not the humans trying to survive, who embody this theme, so let’s take a deep dive into this amazing movie and see just how it supports the pro-life cause. The Basic Plot of The Girl with All the Gifts Like most zombie movies, The Girl with All the Gifts takes place in a world overrun by the living dead, but this isn’t just another George Romero rip-off. The film puts a novel spin on the standard zombie mythology, and that unique lore sets the course for the entire story. See, in this world, when a pregnant woman gets infected with the zombifying fungus, the disease also spreads to her unborn child, but these second-generation zombies differ from their progenitors in a key way. They still struggle with strong zombie impulses, but they’re not just animalistic monsters. By and large, they look and act exactly like normal human children, so unless their hunting instincts are kicking in, it’s impossible to tell them apart from non-infected kids. Nevertheless, a group of scientists and soldiers has managed to identify and capture a number of these second-generation zombies, and they’ve put the creatures in a facility that looks like a mix between a school and an insane asylum. The children take classes and learn from a human teacher, but they’re constantly either restrained or locked away so they can’t hurt anybody. One day, the place comes under attack by a swarm of first-generation zombies, and only a few residents make it out alive. Among them are a zombie child named Melanie, a kind teacher named Miss Justineau, and Dr. Caldwell, the head scientist at the school. They traverse the barren post-apocalyptic landscape searching for a way to survive, and unsurprisingly, most of them look at Melane with more than a hint of suspicion. Other than Miss Justineau, these characters all view the girl as subhuman, but as The Girl with All the Gifts goes one, they slowly learn that she’s just as human as anybody else. “I Can’t Afford It” Now that we know the basic plot of the movie, let’s start getting into some specifics. Before the facility gets overrun by zombies, two scenes highlight the horrific way Dr. Caldwell and the soldiers view these infected children. First, there’s an early scene in The Girl with All the Gifts where a soldier stops Miss Justineau from touching one of her students, and he angrily berates her for “think[ing] something’s human because it’s made in the right shape.” In isolation, that might seem like an odd thing to say, but in context, it makes perfect sense. The man recognizes that Melanie and her classmates look human (they’re “made in the right shape”), but he believes their appearance is deceptive. The way he sees it, these kids are actually inhuman monsters bereft of the dignity real human beings possess, and they deserve to be treated as such. A bit later on, Dr. Caldwell brings Melanie to her lab for a truly nefarious purpose. She wants to dissect the poor girl and use her remains to make a zombie vaccine, but thankfully, Miss Justineau steps in at the last minute and stops her. The two women only have a brief exchange before the scene ends, but their words contain a world of meaning. Justineau explains that you only need to spend five minutes with these children to recognize their humanity, and in response, Caldwell utters a genuinely chilling line: “What you’re feeling, I accept it, but I can’t afford it.” In other words, the doctor doesn’t have a good reason for denying Melanie’s humanity. She knows the girl and her classmates are in fact human beings with the same dignity as anyone else, but she refuses to accept that obvious fact. She wants Melanie to be subhuman so she can dissect the kid and make a vaccine, so she engages in the kind of dehumanizing doublethink that’s plagued our species for ages. Most obviously, it happened back in the heyday of the transatlantic slave trade. The White European slave traders knew they couldn’t treat human beings like cattle, so to justify this barbaric practice, they had to tell themselves that Black Africans aren’t really human. The same thing happens today in modern forms of slavery like sex trafficking, and this kind of rationalization also occurs with regard to abortion. It’s a biological fact that a new human being comes to be at fertilization, so if we really believe in human rights, we have to extend those rights (including the right to life) to the unborn. But the abortion industry “can’t afford” to recognize that basic truth, so it tries to convince people that embryos and fetuses are just clumps of cells rather than true (albeit immature) human beings. Melanie’s Humanity In contrast, Miss Justineau’s claim that you only need to spend five minutes with Melanie to see that she’s human bears itself out in the rest of the film. As the characters travel the desolate terrain, the girl’s true nature becomes harder and harder to deny. She proves to be a valuable member of the team, and there are multiple times when the group would’ve perished without her help. For example, there’s a scene where she uses a stray dog to lead the zombies away from her companions, and in another instance, Melanie goes ahead of the group and finds the best way around an area swamped with zombies. Throughout all this, the girl has numerous chances to run away and leave her friends to fend for themselves, but she never does. She displays truly human traits like loyalty, compassion, and love, so she’s clearly not just a monster that mimics our behavior. Sure, her zombie-like instincts and the fungus that lives inside her make her a bit different from most people, but as she proves time and time again, those differences don’t make her any less human. She has the same basic dignity and deserves the same rights as anyone else, and in the face of this irrefutable evidence, even the hard-hearted Dr. Caldwell is eventually forced to admit the truth. Abortion and Human Dignity The Girl with All the Gifts ends with Melanie unleashing the zombifying fungus into the air and making the world safe for her kind, but she hasn’t forgotten her more “normal” companions. While Dr. Caldwell and the one remaining soldier don’t make it, Miss Justineau stays alive by remaining indoors, and the film ends with her teaching a new group of second-generation zombies from the safety of her new home. It’s a beautiful vision of people putting aside their differences to live in harmony (well, as much harmony as feral children can muster) on the basis of their shared humanity, and if you know anything about the pro-life movement, you know that this vision is the foundation of our advocacy as well. Despite what some people think, opposing abortion isn’t about devaluing women or their bodies. Rather, it’s about recognizing the value and dignity of all human life, born and unborn, and fighting for a world where that dignity is recognized and protected. It’s a cause that dovetails perfectly with the message of The Girl with All the Gifts, and if you pay close attention, you’ll find that the movie understands that connection way better than you might expect. See, the soldiers sometimes refer to Melanie and her classmates as “freaking abortions,” and Melanie herself even incorporates the phrase into her own vocabulary a couple of times (probably out of naïveté). Much like the comment about being “made in the right shape,” this is also an odd expression, but if you understand it in context, it too makes perfect sense. These “abortions” (Melanie and her classmates) are dehumanized and seen as disposable just like the unborn often are in our society, so The Girl with All the Gifts isn’t just about human dignity in general. It’s an allegory for unborn children, and it not-so-subtly decries the way abortion strips them of their humanity and treats them like objects that can be thrown away to benefit others. We’ve all seen it before. A family moves into a new house, and soon afterwards, they realize that the place is haunted. That basic formula has been a staple of horror cinema for about eighty years, but Presence promises something different. Sure, on paper the plot might sound yawn-inducingly familiar, but the film has a twist: it’s shot entirely from the ghost’s perspective. And when I say “entirely,” I mean entirely. From the very first frame to the last, we only experience this story through the intrusive spirit’s eyes, and when I first heard about that unique hook, I was…well, I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to see this novel approach to a time-honored horror trope, so I bought a ticket for opening weekend as soon as I got the chance.
Presence was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and it stars Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, and West Mulholland. The film follows a family of four–Rebecca, Chris, and their teenage kids Chloe and Tyler–as they move into a new house. Unbeknownst to them, the place is haunted by a mysterious entity that spends much of its time invisibly watching them, but the titular presence isn’t the only thing these people have to worry about. Their relationships with each other are falling apart, and Chloe is having a particularly tough time. Her best friend recently died of a drug overdose, and her mother clearly favors her older brother. It’s just a bad situation all around, and in typical haunted house fashion, it’s about to get worse. Before we get to the real meat of this review, I have to give you a warning. Despite the marketing and the premise, Presence is more of a dreary family drama than a straight up horror movie. Sure, there are a few scenes where the entity engages in cliched ghostly behaviors, like moving books around or trashing an entire room, but for the most part, this spirit is a silent observer that just watches its living housemates as they go about their daily lives. Viewers looking for Paranormal Activity-style chills and thrills are going to be sorely disappointed, but if you can accept this film for what it is, I think you’re going to have a great time. For starters, the acting in Presence is excellent. This entire cast is 100% believable, but as usual, there’s a standout who shines a bit brighter than the rest. Chris Sullivan plays Chris, and his character is the only one who seems to care about Chloe. The guy tries his best to repair the girl’s relationships with her mother and brother, but unfortunately, his efforts prove largely ineffective. To add to Chris’s misery, his relationship with his wife is also pretty shaky, and that devastating one-two punch lays a heavy emotional burden on the man’s shoulders. His life is slowly falling apart, and Sullivan masterfully brings those struggles to life. The pain in his face, voice, and mannerisms is nearly tangible, so you’ll believe that Chris is genuinely being crushed under the weight of his family’s heart-rending self destruction. Along with the rest of this stellar cast, Sullivan allows you to buy into these characters with no trouble at all, and for a movie like Presence, that’s crucial. See, for most of the film’s runtime, this story just meanders along without any clear direction. Up until the third act, it’s little more than a steady stream of disappointment and domestic dysfunction, so unlike most mainstream movies, this one isn’t really about the plot. Instead, it’s a character-centric meditation on grief, isolation, and trauma, and as I hinted at earlier, those themes primarily revolve around Chloe. Yes, this whole family is crumbling, but Chloe bears the brunt of their breakdown. The way Rebecca and Tyler treat her and talk about her (both when she’s there and when she’s not) is utterly heartbreaking, and in a somewhat counterintuitive way, that feeling multiplies exponentially when her father stands up for her. His frustration at his wife and son just adds fuel to this emotional fire, so you’ll come to sympathize with the girl after about ten minutes. And if the story itself doesn’t get you on her side, the film’s unique perspective is sure to do the trick. Like I said before, we experience Presence entirely through the spirit’s eyes, and that novel approach greatly intensifies the movie’s emotional appeal. It makes you feel like you’re actually the ghost that lives in this family’s new house, so when the entity begins to show some purpose, you can’t help but imbibe a bit of that purpose yourself. As you might be able to guess, the specter quickly takes an interest in Chloe and even protects her from harm a couple of times, and that pretty much seals the deal for us. Presence doesn’t just tell us to sympathize with the girl. It involves us in its heartbreaking story and almost forces us to care about Chloe’s isolation and grief, and the way I see it, the film wants us to take that concern with us when we walk out of the theater and encounter real human beings experiencing similar problems. The ending hammers that idea home as well, but I obviously can’t get into any specifics about it. I’ll let you find out for yourself how this movie wraps up, but I can say that the final few scenes put a really cool spin on the standard tropes of redemption and unfinished business. They bring the film’s message to life in a stark and surprising way, so when the credits began to roll, I was a happy man. Presence is a great new addition to the haunted house genre, and if you’re a fan of drama horror like me, I highly recommend that you check this movie out. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. Archives
May 2025
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