Metacritic reviews

Tightly written and sensitively rendered, the devastating film is propelled by masterful performances, led by a bewitching Wood in the role she was born to play.

We’re shown damning cycles feeding on each other that prove worse when their hypocrisy and irony is acknowledged. And both Wood and Stone will make you scream and cry depending on what they allow or ignite.

It’s a well-made, gutsy film. So, if you can withstand the whole soul-crushing feature, you’ll probably be glad you stuck it out. If “glad” is an emotion you can still feel afterward.

A Worthy Companion is a lacerating snapshot of what abuse really does: how it can tear away someone’s identity.

Despite a threadbare screenplay featuring overfamiliar motifs, the movie gains traction as a result of a committed, riveting performance by Evan Rachel Wood.

Sluggish and somber, with nary a wink, chuckle or sigh of relief to mitigate the misery, the film is a slog. That's unfortunate, because the writer-directors have a strong visual sense, and, in Wood, a magnetic lead.

Allure is powered by Wood's intense charisma. Laura deploys her magnetic gaze as a weapon, though the destruction she wreaks is most often directed at herself. The character's situation is always untenable, and as it collides with inevitability, the co-writer-director Sanchez brothers lose the tight grip of control they've maintained over the story.

Wood, whose whippet-thin appearance in this dank noir-ish drama semi-draped in mystery could be described as Kristen Stewart lite, fully dedicates herself to embodying a rather unpleasant and contradictory character as she attracts her prey and then goes about abusing them physically and emotionally.

The filmmakers seem less concerned with telling a story than in convincing the audience (and maybe themselves) that they can handle this provocative and potentially exploitive material they’ve contrived with what’s conventionally considered “appropriate” sensitivity.

Evan Rachel Wood and Julia Sarah Stone have a natural chemistry together that brings a feverish and unsettling intensity to their characters' tumultuous relationship, but there's no reprieve from the dour tone of the film.