Life is a marathon. You don’t train for it, you probably don’t stretch enough, but it is a marathon. The mistake that most make is perceiving those around them as competition instead of rivals. Competitors are there to defeat you to make sure that you don’t win. Rivals, however, can be distinctly different in that they can be there to make you better in their own pursuit of improvement. Competitors want you to lose if they can’t win while rivals may embrace your ability to win so that they can learn what to do to better themselves. It’s a handshake for success rather than a dagger for failure. This is a core element to The Travel Companion, the feature film directorial debut from co-directors Travis Wood (Affirmative Action) and Alex Mallis (Shut Up and Paint), which is now in wide release after a premiere at Tribeca 2025. Greed, envy, and self-loathing take center stage as this dramedy explores the repeated pitfalls that can occur when one obsesses over what is missing from our lives that is seemingly present in everyone else’s instead of taking the active steps to achieve what we want.
Tristan Turner as Simon in THE TRAVEL COMPANION. Photo credit: Jason Chiu. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
After a new screening of his graduation thesis, filmmaker Simon (Tristan Turner) goes out for drinks with his roommate, Bruce (Anthony Oberbeck), and fellow filmmaker, Beatrice (Naomi Asa), to celebrate the showing, unwittingly making himself the third wheel of the night. As Bruce and Bianca grow closer, Simon’s comradery turns sour as he views Bianca as having everything he could want while all he has is an incomplete idea that relies on Bruce’s airline work perks for him to be a travel companion. Over time, all Simon can see are those perks going away and, with them, his project. Unable to see any kind of future without them, he clings ever tighter and, in the process, starts to unravel his life.
Written by Mallis, Wood, and Weston Auburn (Black Santa), The Travel Companion is the sort of dramedy in which one slowly grows to absolutely loathe the protagonist because of his own fear and insecurity which create the very situation he feels he can’t escape. Some of this isn’t Simon’s doing as the script and filmmakers highlight how life is sometimes death by a thousand cuts in an opening that’s brief and entirely torturous for Simon. As our film experience begins, Wood and Mallis have Simon in a film screening that’s wrapped and the moderator is calling all participating filmmakers to come to the front. The camera starts by focusing on the moderator before slowing pulling back to reveal all the individuals at the front, then pushing in slowly as Beatrice and Simon stand at the end. Just when Simon is about to get a turn to speak, the moderator calls time and he stands there, mic in-hand, wordless and just swallowing the indignity of being the only filmmaker unable to speak on his film. Turner beautifully plays the moment as we see him struggle to present Simon as outwardly confident while absolutely internalizing the perceived rejection at being denied the chance to speak. In truth, we learn, while Simon can speak on this work, his words are a disorganized jumble as he knows that this film was his graduation thesis from some time before and his current project remains theoretical as an unfinished piece. Standing beside Beatrice, a filmmaker whose own short, she explains, is only a proof-of-concept of a feature she wants to make, increases his insecurity because here is a supposed contemporary yet she’s making his vision happen while he’s stuck in the edit and construction. It’s here, in the comparison, in the sequence with Beatrice, Bruce, and Simon hanging out, that we discover the truth of the film that will be mined throughout the runtime: Simon’s afraid of finishing his project because doing so means transitioning from the possibilities of success to his terror of real failure. Thus the access to the free flights that Simon is afforded as Bruce’s most recent travel companion (a person who allowed to fly for free on a stand-by ticket) becomes a signifier of Simon’s filmmaking dream that he hangs everything on and, therefore, obsesses over because what becomes of his dream if he loses access to travel to all the places that he wants to shoot for his new film?
L-R: Anthony Oberbeck as Bruce and Tristan Turner as Simon in THE TRAVEL COMPANION. Photo credit: Jason Chiu. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Like a calmer, less anxiety-inducing Uncut Gems (2019), The Travel Companion produces a protagonist who is the arbiter of his own fate and is in denial about it. Simon’s so stuck, so terrified of change, that he freaks out over seeing someone use his “Movies” coffee mug and changes to his local bodega. These are signifiers of things that Simon wishes to control but is unable to (the first being an object in his home, creating the suggestion of invasion; while the other is decidedly out of his control, creating the suggestion of his “safe” world growing more chaotic). The script creates opportunities time and again for Simon to see what his life could be, not through the relationship that builds between Bruce and Beatrice, that would be too rote, but through the people Simon meets who exude a tenacity he lacks and doesn’t understand. The taxi driver who’s also an actor and the production security agent who also makes videos are two key examples, but the one who stands out most is the guy who approaches Simon and Beatrice to request a portrait. He’s everything that Simon wants to be — cool, calm, direct, and moving toward his vision. In an era of A.I. slop being normalized via memes and slowly being introduced into full-feature productions (thereby risking the actual human work that makes storytelling evocative), this guy wants something captured on film so it can’t be defamed or questioned. In the moment, Simon’s language gives away his cowardice whereas Beatrice gives no ground in her readiness to assist, providing exactly the energy the guy is looking for. This scene, amid several interactions that Simon engages, highlights that Simon could have everything he wants if he would manifest a single step forward and allow momentum to take hold. Instead, his fear is what guides him, reducing his world every day and pulling his dream from him.
The entire film hangs on Turner’s performance and the actor’s ability to make us root for Simon while getting just as sick of his bullshit as everyone who gets to know him. Through Simon’s encounters, Turner is able to convey what dialogue can’t, the increasing reduction of his confidence, the fears of failure, and the ways in which he feels about not competing. There are those who possess big dreams and work (to them) small jobs instead, growing more frustrated and resentful by the day. Even as we, the audience, start screaming at Simon to get off his ass, to take some accountability, Turner manages to make us remain locked in, unable to look away. It’s not charisma necessarily, Simon lacks that entirely as his desperation grows, but a universality regarding the enemy within that all of us possess. Some are just better are combatting it than others.
L-R: Naomi Asa as Beatrice, Anthony Oberbeck as Bruce, and Tristan Turner as Simon in THE TRAVEL COMPANION. Photo credit: Jason Chiu. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
The Travel Companion isn’t flashy and is a touch more specific to the creative world (specifically filmmaking) than may seem accessible, yet Wood and Mallis still create an atmosphere in which audiences can recognize something within themselves, that part of us that looks to others for validation instead of generating it internally, that judges ourselves based on past work, and that sees everyone as a competitor instead of a potential collaborator. Especially in our current times when costs are higher and the risk of doing something for ourselves is more daunting than ever, these are the moments when we should be reaching for helping hands, not raising fists to throwdown. This is what makes The Travel Companion and Simon, specifically, so damned frustrating because we can see what he’s doing wrong far easier than we can acknowledge it within ourselves. Maybe we’re not so different from Simon after all.
In select theaters and expanding weekly beginning April 10th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official The Travel Companion website.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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