A Trailer Spoiled This Movie’s Big Twist. Fan Hysteria Ensued.

If you do not work in the media, then you cannot fully appreciate spoiler allergies as the ultimate wrench in one’s professional gears.

The effects of this stubborn epidemic aren’t restricted to one side of the industry; whether it’s publicity and marketing teams, or the audiences lining up at theaters to check out the movies they’re hocking, susceptibility is symmetrical. Anybody, at any time, whatever their relationship to cinema, is prone to an anaphylactic reaction of coughing, sniffling, and epiphora when important plot details in their most anticipated films are disclosed to them prematurely.

The blip of hysteria surrounding this weekend’s release of horror film Companion, a plot point “spoiled” in its trailer, and whether or not that ruined things for fans looking forward to the film is the perfect example of this ridiculousness.

(Warning: Naturally, there are spoilers ahead.)

For fairness’ sake, avoiding foreknowledge of the various TV shows, movies, books, and even podcasts that we patronize is a Sisyphean task; social media “engagement,” which frankly feels like indentured servitude for the digital age, means running the risk that a casual glance at your feeds will give away a major character arc’s resolution on House of the Dragon, or Taylor Frankie Paul’s double life on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, or, most recently, the bone chilling twist in Robbert Eggers’ Nosferatu: that Count Orlok has a mustache.

This is, rather indisputably, a problem. Knowing less tends to be better than knowing more when experiencing a story for yourself for the first time, after all.

But there are problems, and there are problems, and knowing in advance that the ghoul menacing Lily-Rose Depp in 1800s Germany has facial hair is the former, not the latter. This makes Focus Features’ dogged insistence on withholding images of Bill Skarsgård throughout the film’s 2024 promotional campaign doubly as frustrating as baffling for the folks making a living covering productions whose custodians, evidently, wish to keep them in the dark about.

Focus’ decision, after all, echoed Neon’s summertime strategy for pushing Oz Perkins’ Longlegs, which hinted at Nicolas Cage’s presence without ever showing his face–a successful ploy, in the sense that Longlegs went on to outpace Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite as the most lucrative release in the studio’s catalogue to date.

Whether Neon’s plan for Longlegs, and Focus’ for Nosferatu, are a response to viewer’s broad intolerance for “spoilers,” or simply a new chapter in pop culture’s long-running endorsement of spoiler aversion, is close to a chicken-egg situation.

What’s clear is that studios are keeping up the tactic, if the teaser and trailer for Drew Hancock’s debut film, Companion, as well as fan reception to them, are any indication. The teaser gives away little information to speak of, apart from an inert Sophie Thatcher letting her arm go up in flames over a romantically appointed candlelit dinner with Jack Quaid. The trailer, on the other hand, gives away the whole movie.

That’s the impression you’d get if you read comments on YouTube or Reddit, posted by people who had not yet seen Companion and thus were unqualified to remark on whether or not knowing that Thatcher’s character, Iris, is a robot actually gives anything away. So rest assured, from someone who has seen the film, that yes, while Thatcher does play a robot—in fact, a sexbot—knowing so ahead of time robs you of none of the story’s suspense or ancillary twists and turns. If anything, you are better off walking into Companion fully aware that Iris is a machine. It’s part of Hancock’s sleight of hand.

Companion’s first 20 or 30 minutes hinge on questions not about Iris, but about its supporting characters: Do they know about Iris? How much do they know? For how long? What’s their relationship to Josh (Quaid), her “boyfriend,” in actuality her owner and operator–are they friends, co-workers, or co-conspirators?

The writing doesn’t hide Iris’ nature, per se, or reserve any inklings that his buddies–Kat (Megan Suri), Patrick (Lukas Gage), and Eli (Harvey Guillén), or Kat’s Russian situationship, Sergey (Rupert Friend)–are “in” on the truth, or if nothing else possess the vaguest grasp that she isn’t a human being. The tension that sustains this stretch of Companion, for us, is figuring out the extent of their understanding.

And it’s so thunderingly obvious that this is Hancock’s intent that retroactively pouring over those comments sections is a lot like watching a Boomer attempt to operate a smart TV, or a millennial puzzle over a rotary phone. This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic set-up, Screenwriting 101 for contemporary genre cinema where mystery plays a part; it might even be fair to characterize Companion’s opening act as a bait and switch, and to argue that WB’s marketing purposefully plays into Hancock’s sneaky reversal of expectations.

When we find out that Jack is just a pseudo-incel loser who bought Iris after striking out in the dating field too many times, that Eli, Kat, and Patrick all know it, that Iris is their patsy in their scheme to rob Sergey, and that Patrick is Eli’s robot, it suddenly becomes a trifle that the trailer so brazenly divulges Iris’ identity as a cyborg.

See that? That’s a spoiler. Knowing Companion’s narrative before seeing Companion is a mood killer, as it is with just about every movie ever. But there is a difference between the two things–knowing what happens in a movie, and knowing its set-up.

We watch movies to see where they go and find out how they end. “Iris is a store-bought android” has nothing to do with either. That’s called synopsis, and synopsis shouldn’t–objectively doesn’t–have any bearing on your ability to enjoy a movie. That’s a “you” problem.

But there’s good news: Just like hay fever, there’s an easy solution to our widespread cultural sophophobia. Take a Zyrtec, quit complaining, go to the theater, and let yourself have a good time with Companion, spoilers be damned.