Companion, in theaters now, is a horror comedy starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid. They play a loving couple whose relationship actually contains disturbing multitudes. Specifically, Iris (Thatcher) is a so-called companion robot, a synthetic partner created to satisfy the other person’s needs, and something has gone wrong with her programming. This is the premise of the film, meaning this is all information the viewer receives during the first 20 minutes or so. And yet, when the full trailer was released, people got mad at the studio for supposedly giving away the whole plot and its alleged twists, despite the fact said trailer contains footage that is largely limited to the first half hour of the movie.

Similar spoiler paranoia was at play when the marketing for Trap kicked in: M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is about a serial killer who discovers the concert he’s attending with his daughter is actually a trap set for him by law enforcement. “Thanks for giving away the twist”, outraged web users cried when the trailer came out, even though all available information suggested, once again, that the footage shown up to that point was all from the first act. When my friend Christoph Schelb interviewed Shyamalan ahead of the Swiss release, he asked the filmmaker if he thought the details mentioned above were a plot twist or just the premise of the film. Shyamalan opted for the latter since the information in question is laid out in the first 15 minutes.

Juror #2 also got the attention of overzealous members of the spoiler police when the trailer showed Nicholas Hoult’s character, a juror in a murder trial, coming to the realization he may be the actual killer. The full movie confirmed what many suspected: the identity of the culprit is not a mystery, and the dramatic thrust of the plot concerns whether the juror will come clean about it or not.

The irony is, of course, people had previously complained about trailers being too deceptive, whether by design (promotional videos for Avengers: Infinity War were edited to conceal certain third act developments) or by accident (two fans of Ana De Armas sued Universal over Yesterday, since the actress appeared in the first trailer but was nowhere to be found in the finished movie, her character having been removed as a result of test screening feedback).

The three films I mentioned were upfront about their premises, with no trickery whatsoever, but movie buffs who spend too much time online have been conditioned to believe even the slightest piece of pre-release information is a spoiler (that some so-called scoopers make a living divulging too many details ahead of time doesn’t help). Particularly amusing was the ire aimed at Trap, since it stood to reason Shyamalan – a director known for surprises in the third act, and thinks his older movies should retain a spoiler moratorium – was unlikely to have signed off on a trailer giving the game away.

What say you, dear readers? What’s your stance on how much is divulged in marketing materials nowadays? And do you have any other memorable examples of spoiler panic over stuff that was in no way, shape or form a spoiler?