In the world of Companion, technologically manufactured romantic partners are so common that “robo-shaming” has entered the lexicon, lest anyone feel judged for the object of their affection. Getting hooked up with one of these mechanical paramours isn’t unlike setting up an iPhone: Upon delivery, you choose its language, adjust its eye color and voice timbre, and even set its intelligence level. Then, beyond mere facial recognition, you establish a Love Link—a relationship history that forms the basis of your partner’s emotional attachment to you.
This is where writer-director Drew Hancock’s film begins, as Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid), playing out their prepackaged “meet cute,” strike up a flirtation in a grocery store, the latter goofily spilling oranges all over the floor, the whole scene feeling like an Albertson’s commercial dreamed up by A.I. The thing is, Iris doesn’t know that she isn’t human—nor, at this point, do we. That will be the first of many cleverly buried turns that Hancock thrillingly dishes out throughout the film, which, once it gets going, plays as if Spike Jonze’s Her were a slasher movie, trenchantly satirizing 21st-century romance while delivering the gory genre goods.
Iris and Josh are spending the weekend with two other couples at a lake house in the country: Patrick and Eli (Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillén), and Kat and Sergey (Megan Suri and Rupert Friend). Lured there by the promise of Sergey’s “rustic cabin,” Josh is surprised to find a more lavish retreat than expected, especially given the ambiguity of the eccentric Russian’s profession. (“I have my fingers in a lot of pots” and “It’s a dirty business” are all that the stereotypically drawn Sergey will say, setting up the film’s best punchline.) Iris, for her part, is intuitive enough to grasp that Kat doesn’t like her, but when the latter confesses, “You make me feel so replaceable,” Iris naturally misses the technophobic gist of the comment.
Where most killer-robot movies, from The Terminator to Chopping Mall, play on our fear of technology run amok, Companion elicits sympathy for the existential plight of its synthetic protagonist, who gains self-awareness only when she’s going to be shut down. The weekend goes awry when Sergey gets Iris alone and attempts to coerce her into sex, at which point her programming kicks in and she kills him in self-defense. Seemingly horrified, Josh decides the only thing to do is hit the reset button behind Iris’s ear and turn her in to her maker, Empathix. During Josh’s prolonged “goodbye,” Iris manages to escape into the woods, kicking off the chase (and fight for survival) that makes up most of the rest of the film.
Hancock has a knack for staging kills as if they were sight gags; one among many satisfying payoffs involves an electric corkscrew used conspicuously in the first act (Chekhov would be proud). Even more effective is the way that Hancock casually sets up the film’s locale and the tools at the characters’ disposal (a voice-controlled car, Iris’s adjustable settings) and then sets the plot in motion, with complications and strategies arising naturally from that groundwork.
If the film’s themes come across as obvious—the link between controlling-boyfriend tendencies and customizable technology, or the way Iris is fundamentally beholden to her Love Link with Josh—they’re thankfully never blunt, embodied implicitly within character-based behavior rather than articulated in dialogue. Before we even learn what Iris is, we see Josh treat her like an object, commanding her to “go to sleep” following sex—but his disposition toward her, while recontextualized by the later reveal, feels no less creepy (or darkly funny) in retrospect.
It’s not difficult to find holes in the film’s premise. For one, it may leave you wondering about the logistics of preventing these amorous robots from achieving self-consciousness, or the lengths to which people would have to go to maintain the charade for their sole benefit. But Companion, a popcorn movie first and foremost, moves along at a fast enough clip that it gets away with such a fanciful conceit, prioritizing surface-level entertainment over detailed world-building. And there’s no shame in that when it’s done so well.
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