Valentine’s Day has come and gone, and if you didn’t watch Heart Eyes during the holiday, then you should have taken your date to go see Companion instead. Of course, it’s date night worthy—it’s right there in the title!
Companion tells the story of Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid). They’re a young couple in love on their way to a weekend in a mansion in the wilderness. Or at least, that’s what the film makes you believe in the beginning. In reality (spoilers), Iris is Josh’s robot companion/girlfriend, and Josh and Co. are trying to use her to murder someone so they can steal from the wealthy man Josh’s friend Kat (Megan Suri) is seeing.
While the focus of the film was on Josh and Iris and their relationship, Companion also included a queer couple, Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillén). Shockingly, they weren’t shunted off to the side for mere minutes of screentime or to share a few well-timed quips—rather, they were a near-equal focus and, honestly, one of the most moving parts of the film. It’s refreshing, especially in horror, to see a same-sex couple get equal footing.
2023’s Knock at the Cabin is one film that comes to mind in that same vein. The focus of the film was on Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge). It was treated like any other horror film with any other straight couple: Eric and Andrew take their daughter on vacation to a cabin in the woods, where they are subsequently held hostage.
As an avid horror lover, it gets tiring seeing the same tropes over and over. Sure, sometimes it’s fun to get back to the formula of a good old-fashioned slasher, but it’s 2025! Give us some variety. While we do have great campy films like Bodies Bodies Bodies and They/Them, I have always loved horror films with strong emotional stakes, and sadly, that is something that you see more often with straight couples or no couples at all.
Gay Halloween and subtext
It is also no surprise that queerness has a huge impact on how horror is celebrated, especially when it comes to Halloween. Why shouldn’t we also get our big billing? We shouldn’t still be side characters or facing queer-related adversity. That was something I loved a lot about Eli and Patrick’s relationship in Companion—they just met, like any other couple. There was nothing special about it, and their queerness wasn’t the focus, just like we don’t go, “Oh, wow, glad that straight couple found each other.”
Of course, queer subtext has existed for decades in film. Take, for instance, 1985’s Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, which is widely considered to be one of, if not the gayest, horror films. Though it’s all done with subtext—because, again, it’s 1985—director David Chaskin later admitted that it was meant to be viewed as homoerotic.
I can’t downplay the cultural importance of films like that because they all paved the way for the films we have today. Things were forbidden, but filmmakers and storytellers were brave enough to put those messages in their art anyway.
So many queer people can relate to horror films for one reason or another, and rightfully so, because for decades, horror was the genre subversive enough to feature storylines about adversity that queer people could relate to. I hope, though, that we can begin to see more horror films centered around couples like Patrick and Eli and Eric and Andrew. Give me a Strangers-like film with a queer couple. I want it all!
