Podcasts

Podcast: ‘Companion’ Gets Uncertified

January 31st, 2025 | By Matthew Monagle

While 2025 might not be off to the, ah, greatest start in a lot of ways, nobody can blame studio horror for not bringing its A-game. Over the next couple of weeks, audiences will be treated to studio-backed horror like Oz Perkins‘s The Monkey, Josh Ruben‘s Heart Eyes, and Companion, the latest high-concept horror film from the studio that brought you Barbarian. Does it live up to its full potential? Well, that depends which podcast host you talk to.

For Iris (Sophie Thatcher), meeting Josh (Jack Quaid) was love at first sight. That is why she is so determined to make a good first impression with his work friends during a long weekend at a lake house. But when the owner of the guest house gets a little too friendly with Iris, she’s forced to defend herself, sparking a turn of violent events that will test Iris and Josh’s relationship to its limits. The feature film debut of writer-director Drew Hancock, Companion is another example of studio horror done right.

In this short excerpt from the podcast, Matt Donato shares that he was merely whelmed with the film, and that he wasn’t the only one in his theater that felt that way:

“I go with more high-concept, mid-delivery. I wasn’t enthusiastic a lot of the time, and neither was my screening. My screening was very tempered. There wasn’t a lot of hooting and hollering. There was just a lot of like, oh, ha yeah, that’s cool.”

The Companion episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or the podcast platform of your choice.