Emerging unexpectedly as a genre film from what seemed a folk-flavored study of storytelling tradition, this plodding oddity will be a hard sell to audiences.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
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Courtesy Stories are nested within stories to steadily diminishing returns in “Company,” a perversely ponderous exercise in hide-the-genre that takes more than an hour to reveal what its game really is. Gathering little tension ahead of a ludicrous twist — one that puts proceedings in a new light while adding no great urgency to them — Casey Affleck’s second feature as writer-director feels altogether less assured than his 2019 debut, the somberly effective post-apocalyptic drama “Light of My Life.” This time staying behind the camera entirely, and handing a demanding lead role to his teenage son Atticus, Affleck again brings an earnest seriousness of purpose to this staggered tale of a mysterious stranger drifting into a household and holding it eerily rapt, repeated across three different eras. But for all the echoey narrative tripling here, the payoff is distinctly muted.
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