‘Companion’ movie review: a film about a killer sex robot with plenty to say on the horrors of modern relationships
Writer and director Drew Hancock’s debut feature Companion feels evocative of many things. An intoxicating blend of slasher, sci-fi, satire, rom-com, relationship drama, dystopian nightmare, and nail-biting thriller all rolled into one, several of the tropes and trappings might feel familiar, but that’s kind of the point.
It’s a difficult movie to talk about without veering too far into spoiler territory, so in the interest of fairness, nothing the trailer doesn’t reveal will be given away. The marketing decided to reveal that Sophie Thatcher’s Iris is a robot, and while that might seem like a major revelation to give away ahead of the game, rest assured: Companion has plenty more twists, turns, and surprises in store.
Hancock knows how to embrace clichés, which is a key part of the film’s charm. It’s got plenty of things audiences have seen before in a variety of genres: the meet-cute, the new girlfriend struggling to ingratiate herself into an established group of friends, the ominous isolated house where the action unfolds over a weekend, and plenty more. However, Companion thrives by tearing those conventions to shreds, both literally and figuratively.
The sly and sinister subversiveness is perfectly encapsulated by the casting of Jack Quaid as Josh. On one hand, he channels his mother Meg Ryan’s affable likeability as a romantic lead. On the other hand, he’s no slouch in the Dennis Quaid department either, able to turn on the sleaze and dial up the sinister intentions.
Josh and Iris are off to meet his friends for a getaway, and it’s all expected stuff: she doesn’t think they like her, but he assuages her doubts as the first act paints the picture of an idyllic relationship. They met; it was love at first sight, and she’ll do anything to present herself as the idealised version of what a girlfriend should be, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Just underneath the surface, Companion has plenty to say. The fact Josh has a partner with settings he can literally manipulate to give him the best version of Iris allows Hancock to shine a light on the nature of toxic relationships, the adverse effects of long-term loneliness, and the crushing realisation that instead of being a partner, she’s his property that can be turned up, tuned down, and switched off on a whim, plunging Iris into part existential crisis and part rampage of revenge when she realises just how one-sided their union really is.
Companion poses some big questions on the concepts of autonomy, reality, power dynamics, ethical boundaries, and the constantly narrowing bond between humanity and technology, which aren’t themes typically present in what’s ostensibly a heightened genre flick. And what a heightened genre flick it is because when the gloves come off, and the shit hits the fan, the balance between the banal and the brutal, the heart-wrenching and the hilarious, and the breezy and bloody is deftly struck.
At its core, Companion is a movie about a sexbot that turns on its master. Superficially, there’s not much to it. And yet, thanks to another fiercely committed performance from rising ‘scream queen’ Thatcher, Quaid’s performance of two halves, plenty of smart world-building, and Hancock’s aesthetic decision to never frame the movie as anything other than a relationship drama to maintain a rigid reality to the increasingly outlandish events, the end result is a wildly unique genre-bender and an impressive debut.
