A Yellowjackets Star's Must-Watch Sci-Fi Horror Movie Is Killing It On Max

Be warned, major spoilers for "Companion" follow.

Ryan Coogler's vampire film "Sinners" made a deserved smash at the box office this weekend, but audiences who stayed home got to enjoy a different Warner Bros.-distributed horror picture: Drew Hancock's "Companion," which joined streaming service Max on Friday, April 18 and has since become its no. 1 ranked movie. In "Companion," Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) are a seemingly picture-perfect young couple. The movie opens with their meet-cute, and Iris, head over heels, narrates that meeting Josh was the first moment in her life she felt true purpose. The second? "The day I killed him."

Zach Cregger, director of the 2022 horror film "Barbarian," was a producer on "Companion." Like that picture, "Companion" makes a huge swerve after its first act, turning into a completely different movie than you'd expected. Unlike "Barbarian," where the secrets stayed locked up tight until release, the "Companion" marketing team spoiled this twist in the film's trailers. If you've avoided hearing it, now is your last chance to watch the movie unspoiled.

Okay! 30-ish minutes in, "Companion" reveals that Iris is a robot. In the near future, the company Empathix mass-produces life-like "companions" for the lonely. Iris didn't meet Josh by chance in a grocery store, he rented her as a substitute for a living and breathing girlfriend. It's suggested he picked her name from the song "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls, a song all about the kind of total devotion that Josh expects from Iris. She's happy to give it ... until Josh sets her up to be assaulted by their host Sergey (Rupert Friend). Iris kills him in self-defense, just as Josh expected. (He wants to steal Sergey's fortune and leave Iris to be the fall gal). Although Iris' memories are pre-programmed, her personality is all too real, and the film becomes about her struggle for freedom.

"Companion" fits neatly into other AI films such as "Ex Machina" and "Her." They're all about men seeking affection from the artificial. Men like Josh see women as dolls anyway, so of course he chooses a mate he can custom mold, and who won't expect him to better himself. Iris growing into a person, not a program, is inextricable from a message of women's liberation.

But when "Companion" preaches, you can practically see the choir. The movie's social commentary is correct, but it recites old perspectives instead of adding new ones. However, if the movie is a bit shallow, it's also super entertaining. "Companion" is a tight roller coaster thriller; what it lacks in thematic surprises, it makes up for in narrative ones, and has a deft comic touch. 

The anchor that holds the movie together is undoubtedly Thatcher, or as I like to call her, future Emmy winner Sophie Thatcher.

When you watch enough movies and TV, I think you get a good sense for when an actor is a rising star. From the second I first saw Sophie Thatcher perform in the television series "Yellowjackets," she set off that sense in me. "Yellowjackets," set in both 1996 and 2021, follows a girls soccer team who survive a plane crash and wind up stranded in the Wilderness. To survive, they turn to paganism and cannibalism. Then, 25 years later, the adult survivors still struggle to move on from what they did.

Thatcher plays the teenage Natalie Scatorccio, parallel to Juliette Lewis as Nat in 2021. A hard-drinking and grunge music-loving punk, Natalie's eyeliner and leather jacket make her look like she's too cool to care. But she does, so much. The team's conscience, Natalie is the most abrasive and short-fused Yellowjacket on the surface, but also the one with the biggest heart within. Though the Wilderness tears all the girls' humanity away, Natalie clings to hers the hardest.

"Yellowjackets" season 2 premiere "Friends, Romans, Countrymen," ends with Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl" — that song refers to people who will backstab friends when it serves their own benefit. Most of the Yellowjackets are some flavor of Cornflake Girl, but Natalie is a rarer Raisin Girl, someone who will stick by your side and stay true to herself.

On "Yellowjackets," Thatcher had two challenges. She had to make Natalie compelling all on her own and play a young Juliette Lewis. (Natalie's bleached blonde hair suggests Lewis as Mallory Knox in "Natural Born Killers.") And she did both, in spades! She's been getting better and better each season of "Yellowjackets," and remains the standout of the teen cast. It's no surprise that while acting on the show, she's also been building a successful movie career, including "Companion."

"Companion" shows Thatcher's range, because Iris and Natalie couldn't be more different. Look at their costuming; Natalie is punk rock, inseparable from her leather jacket, keeping her hair messy and bleached, and favoring dark makeup. Iris, though, checks off each box of the stereotypical feminine. Looking right out of the "The Stepford Wives" from frame #1, she prefers pink and baby-blue colored outfits, from shorts to dresses to sweaters. Her dark brunette hair makes her skin look porcelain pale. Thatcher even makes her husky voice, which she's used to accentuate Natalie's harshness, sound more girlish as Iris. Iris is built to be sturdy, but she projects fragility — because that's what Josh wants. His mistake is assuming that's all Iris can be.

In an interview with IMDB, Thatcher described her two characters as "polar opposites ... in the beginning, but then I think that Iris kind of turns into something very similar to Natalie as she goes through her character arc."

"Yellowjackets," "Companion," and Thatcher's other roles in Stephen King adaptation "The Boogeyman" and religious horror picture "Heretic" have earned her the "Scream Queen" title. She's acknowledged this label before, but has also been hesitant to fully embrace it. She's talented enough to play all kinds of roles, not just capable but frightened survivors, and she wants to. "I'm ready to not be covered in blood," Thatcher has said. When she finally books that movie, I'll be first in line to see it.

"Companion" is streaming on Max.