Casey Affleck's 'Company' Draws 4.5-Minute Venice Ovation at Premiere

Q: What is the controversial, late-arriving twist in Casey Affleck's film that left Venice critics both frustrated and mesmerized?

The late, controversial twist is that *Company* turns out to be a vampire story. Critics in Venice said Casey Affleck’s film spends much of its 92-minute runtime presenting itself as a slow, literary, interlocking frontier mystery told across three time periods. Then, deep into the film, the central 1903 storyline reveals Caleb and the surrounding killings in a way that recasts the movie as a supernatural vampire narrative rather than only a gothic historical drama. That reveal divided reviewers. Some found it frustrating because it arrives so late and shifts the genre abruptly, making the elaborate nested storytelling feel overly coy or ponderous. Others said the same turn was mesmerizing because it recontextualizes the film’s themes of grief, vengeance, immortality, forgiveness and storytelling itself, giving the earlier layers a new connection and meaning. So the “late-arriving twist” critics were referring to was not a minor plot surprise, but the disclosure that the film’s mysterious drifter-and-murders tale is essentially a vampire tale hiding inside an art-house gothic mystery.

3 articles · Updated · Deadline · Sep 9

A 4½-minute ovation greeted Company after its debut in Venice's Sala Grande, though Casey Affleck and the cast exited while applause was still continuing.
Nick Nolte drew one of the loudest cheers at the screening's introduction, with Ben Affleck attending in support and filming the audience from his seat beside the cast.
Company, directed by Affleck from a script he wrote with Ron Hansen, unfolds across 1975, 1953 and an older frontier-era murder tale as its stories interlock.
At the press conference, Affleck said the film was not explicitly political but was shaped in part by global conflicts and personal turmoil, framing it as a meditation on grief, vengeance and forgiveness.