SPOILER WARNING: The next article incorporates spoilers for Companion. For those who haven’t seen the film but, proceed at your personal danger! If you have to be satisfied to see the movie, learn my four-star spoiler-free CinemaBlend assessment.
Arriving in theaters this previous weekend, Companion is an all-around superior massive display expertise. It’s humorous, violent, and constantly stunning – as much as and together with its closing kill, which is a cherry-on-top second. The movie does a terrific job establishing the electrical wine bottle opener, that includes it in a pair scenes, and then you definately get an amazing payoff as Sophie Thatcher’s Iris makes use of it on the top of Jack Quaid’s Josh. It’s such a terrific concept that I felt compelled to ask author/director Drew Hancock about it throughout an interview earlier this month, and I used to be shocked to study that the system initially had an entirely completely different place within the plot.
Promising to guard spoilers till after the movie was launched, I requested the filmmaker in regards to the electrical wine bottle opener final month through the Companion press day in Los Angeles, and he advised me that the flamboyant kitchen gadget initially grew to become a homicide weapon a lot earlier within the film. Quite than being part of the wrestle within the massive finale, it was initially included to be a part of the twist within the first act. Stated Hancock,
Nicely, they do not do this, so I needed to invent a wine opener that did not function in the identical method. However that initially was gonna be how Sergei died, truthfully. That was like my first… He brings out a bottle of wine, and that is spoiler territory… In order that was gonna be, that killed Sergei.
It is smart. The electrical wine bottle opener is first featured in Companion because the collected characters have their first dinner collectively on the lake home, so it was primed to be included within the violent sequence that takes place the morning after. As an alternative, the scene within the completed movie has Rupert Buddy’s Sergei bringing a bottle of vodka with him for his rendezvous with Iris, and Iris makes use of each that bottle and the knife Josh vegetation in her pocket to fend off Sergei/kill him when he makes an attempt to rape her.
So why did Drew Hancock determine to divert from this plan? The essential reply is that it was simply too good an concept to make use of so early within the movie. Along with not with the ability to consider one thing higher/extra novel to conclude the wrestle between Iris and Josh, the author/director acknowledged that it functioned as an emblem of domesticity that made it completely ironic to make use of as a weapon. He continued,
Then you definately get to a degree the place you are like, ‘Nicely, you’ll be able to’t prime the wine opener.’ So I began realizing, ‘Nicely, perhaps that is one of the best ways to kill Josh as a result of it is image of romance and domesticity and there is that degree of it.
The Companion filmmaker didn’t point out it, however I additionally like how the modified occasions with Sergei replicate on Josh. It’s unhealthy sufficient that Josh and Megan Suri’s Kat set the person as much as be murdered by overriding safeties in Iris’ programming, however the truth that the Jack Quaid character additionally secretly slips the knife into her pocket is an additional contact of malice that the film doesn’t have if Sergei brings the electrical wine bottle opener to the scene himself. It’s a sensible change for a number of causes.
I can let you know from private expertise that each the opening twist and the ultimate battle are sequences that you simply solely take pleasure in extra when seeing the movie a number of instances, and I wholly suggest it. Having earned crucial acclaim, Companion is now enjoying in theaters in all places (having positioned second on the home field workplace this previous weekend), and it’s a film that we right here at CinemaBlend will doubtless be discussing rather a lot within the months forward, as whereas it’s solely February, there’s a very robust likelihood it will get remembered as probably the greatest horror movies of 2025.