Companion (2025)
Directed by: Drew Hancock
Written by: Drew Hancock
Starring: Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Sophie Thatcher
USA
IN CINEMAS NOW
RUNNING TIME: 97 mins
REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera
Iris is deeply in love with her boyfriend Josh, who one day drives them to a secluded lakehouse to spend time with some of his friends. There’s his best mate Kat who doesn’t like Iris, Kat’s older and rather shady Russian boyfriend Sergey, and couple Eli and Patrick. The first evening sees most of the group getting plastered. The following morning, Iris goes off to sunbathe in nature and kills Sergey in self-defense when he tries to rape her, before being “switched off” and waking up tied up. “Switched off”? you say? Well, Iris [SPOILER] is actually a ‘companion’ robot, a subservient mechanical partner bought by Josh, something that she’s terribly shocked and upset to hear. But then she escapes and, apparently considered a danger, has to be hunted down….
I should probably say SPOILER here even if I’ve already said it in my synopsis of the first third, bug then I assume right away that readers have seen the trailer. Well, the second one. The first was a rather good attempt at misdirection, suggesting that Companion was just an odd and perverse love story, which was interesting enough and nicely timed for Valentine’s Day. Was it a mistake for the second trailer to reveal that its main character was – yes I’m going for it – a robot? Hard to say. It certainly made it easier for us critics to write about the movie, though just imagine how effective this revelation would have been if most people didn’t know? In any case, the premise of this film is certainly a believable one; in the future, people can purchase robots that look and act like humans and do whatever their owner, who can control and modify them via an a[[, tells them to do. After all, sex robots have been a thing for some time. The movie often comes across as Ex Machina, Her, Don’t Worry Darling, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Westworld [the TV series] and several other recent related offerings [a friend of mine compared it to an episode of Black Mirror though I haven’t that show] all glued together. Many of the elements aren’t developed as much as they could be., the screenplay by director Drew Hancock sometimes feeling like a first draft, while surely we’ve almost had enough of movies being really about female empowerment and so-called “toxic” masculinity, at lest when these themes are handled in such a superficial way? Despite all this though, Companion still manages to be often tense, something that the bits of black humour don’t weaken, in no small part due to Drew’s confident direction and fine technical work all around, and the cast all give it their all.
It begins with Iris blissfully remembering meeting Josh, the love of her life, in a textbook, romantic-comedy dream scenario, which Iris describes in voiceover as one of two life-defining moments – the other being when she killed him. He goes to chat her up in a shop and accidentally causes an avalanche of oranges to cover the floor, something Hugh Grant might have done back in the day. Then we see the pair laughing on their way to a remote lakehouse for a getaway weekend with Josh’s friends, a lakehouse which is far more remote than Iris expected, though she doesn’t seem to mind. Iris says that she’s never felt accepted by Kat who’s Josh’s best friend, no matter how hard she tries. They pull up to a house which immediately surprises the pair with its size and grandeur. Josh tells Iris not to be nervous around Kat, she’ll be fine. Is it being suggested that Iris thinks there may once have been something between Josh and Kat, and that Kat is a bit jealous? Or – let me put it a different way – are we intended to think this is? It would have worked well to sidetrack viewers if that second trailer hadn’t revealed – you know what. Anyway, a slightly rude Kat introduces Josh and Iris to the house’s owner, her wealthy Russian boyfriend, Sergey, who has “fingers in a lot of tins” and may even be involved in crime. Also there is a gay couple, Eli and Patrick, who are already several sheets to the wind. The group eat dinner, and these introductory scenes ain’t bad; in fact I’d have been okay if we’d spent a bit more time with these people before something bad takes place. In any case, a hungover Josh doesn’t feel like exploring the surroundings with Iris the following morning. so she decides to do it herself, but as soon as she’s found a lovely spot by the lake to relax, she’s joined by Sergey who seems to consider it’s his right to make sexual advances towards her, not to mention the bizarre fact that Kat suggested the idea.
This resulting violence is handled very well, the shocking sight of a panicky Iris appearing inside the house to the others covered in blood, then cutting back to the event itself, where Sergey attempted to rape Iris and she stabbed him in self-defense. Josh uses the command, “Iris, go to sleep,” powering her down, and she awakens tied to a chair. Josh tells her she’s a ‘companion’ robot who can be controlled by an app. She had n0 idea of this, thinking that she was actually human. It’s certainly a terrific idea – a machine that thinks it’s human having to adjust to the fact that it’s not. There have of course been a few variations on this before, but it’s such a thought-provoking issue so we certainly don’t mind seeing it again. Far from being a human being, Iris is an artificial creation which essentially offers an AI-powered girlfriend experience; all the pleasures of a loving partner with none of the pesky difficulties that come with free will. She’s docile, is unable to lie, and completely customisable. Having not long got out of a very toxic relationship which has well and truly messed with my head, I can’t say that the idea isn’t unappealing, even if I don’t like my women to be at all docile, and I doubt very much that I’m alone. When Josh leaves her to talk with Kat, Iris breaks free, steals Josh’s phone and flees into the nearby forest, where she reviews her settings, increasing her intelligence from 4o% to 100 %. It’s then revealed that Josh “jailbroke” Iris and also altered other of her settings, giving her aggression, indeed an ability to do harm which, as we learned from Isaac Asimov, is not a feature that a robot should have. Why did Josh do all this? I won’t reveal the answer to that question, but the film gives us one at this point anyway, and our ideas about pretty much all the characters are suddenly changed.
It all becomes more of a chase with slight slasher elements, with a few bits of fairly gory violence, the strongest instances being carried out by humans against robots, which probably wouldn’t seem as bad if we didn’t really like said robots. The plot goes all over the place and sometimes surprises, but one also gets the impression that Hancock was sometimes making things up as he went along, and the idea of “resetting” robots is perhaps overused even if we appreciate that free will is actually the most important theme here. “Robots” you ask? Yes indeed, there are two in the film. In fact there are two robot – human couples which are well contrasted. There’s one where the human is nice to the robot and even feels love; as well as being homosexual this is also a mixed-race couple, mixed-race couples approaching the other kind these days in movies and on TV way beyond any reflection of reality. And then there’s one where the human isn’t nice at all and just exploits the robot for his own needs. This contrast makers a little more complex the idea of abuse and control, even suggesting hope for the making and use of such technology. However, seeing as we’re currently living in a culture where women are [rightfully] far more prominent than they ever have been, surely in the future that Drew depicts, this would have continued and we’d have also had females using male robot companions? That would have been interesting, even subversive [which tells you how silly things have become]. But no, yet again we have the “bad men” trope which really needs to be given a rest, especially when it’s employed in such a simplistic fashion, though at least we do get one woman here who’s unsympathetic. I do wonder if the addition of one or two more characters [and I don’t mean the two minor ones who do eventually show up] would have really helped. Hancock certainly had the basis of something really good here, but he really needed to do more work on it.
Nonetheless he stages some very exciting moments and the employing of dark humour surprisingly fails to undercut this. The decision to contrast retro-style outfits with the modern-futuristic style of the technology and setting was a good one. Costuming gets overlooked by many of us writers [though I’ve lost count of the many times I’ve watched films with females who notice and remark on such things] and it’s something which I’m going to try to mention more often. Eli Born’s cinematography also stands out with its use of often bright colours and some nice foreshadowing where items end up being used in dramatic ways. The darkly comic gags work well and can be said to include a few very knowing song choices on the soundtrack. But the best thing in the movie might be Sophie Thatcher, who’s on her way to becoming something of a horror star [well this is in part a horror film isn’t it?] following her roles in The Boogeyman and the very fine Heretic. Here, she conveys to the viewer Iris’s confusion, pain and rage, and makes Iris totally believable. There are occasions when the deep, sharp yet touching film that Companion aspires to be surfaces, and they usually centre on Thatcher, who’s so good that we want these bits to be longer, in a film which seems curiously stretched out in some passages and frustratingly brief in others. The character of Josh is well played by Jack Quaid with some good layered performing, but really could have done with some deepening instead of turning out to be another nasty “privileged” male. Meanwhile Lucas Gage and Harvey Guillen share terrific chemistry in their roles and provide some nice warmth.
Companion is certainly heavily flawed and doesn’t seem entirely achieved, but in spite of this it does still excite and even compel, largely it seems just from folks doing their job very well. Directors remaking their own work isn’t historically as bad an idea as it sounds, so maybe Hancock can re-do this when he’s rich and famous.
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