Billed as “a new kind of love story from the creators of Barbarian“, the tongue-in-cheek thriller Companion finds young couple Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) arriving at a lake house for the weekend. There they meet Josh’s catty friend Kat (Megan Suri), her boyfriend and owner of the house Sergey (Rupert Friend), along with a third couple in Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillén). After swapping meet-cute stories over dinner and dancing to Book Of Love, things seem to be off to a good start but the next day brings with it a shocking incident of fatal violence. As the group scrambles to reconcile with the horrific event, revelations are made about the relationships between the houseguests that affect how they move forward.
If you haven’t seen the full trailer for Companion and don’t know anything else about the film, you will almost certainly enjoy the movie more if you don’t know any more going into it. However, the marketing from Warner Bros. has already let audiences in on the Companion‘s biggest twist: that Iris isn’t human but is actually a lifelike companion robot. After that reveal, which occurs around the 20-minute mark, the pace of the movie increases considerably and centers around Iris trying to make sense of her new reality. When she discovers that her settings can be adjusted by an app on Josh’s phone, she swipes it and runs into the woods to see everything that her programming allows, with Josh and company close behind her.
In his debut as both writer and director for the same project, Drew Hancock peppers his “robot on the run” tale with biting commentary about how we as a society treat (and mistreat) artificial intelligence. Specifically, Hancock focuses on lonely young men who view women as objects to the degree that they’d rather fashion objects around to resemble women than adjust their viewpoint. More broadly, Companion also wrestles with the classic sci-fi conundrum of the kinds of rights that should be afforded to AI mechanisms, particularly when they behave more humanely than the humans around them. Despite these heady themes, the movie makes room for pithy one-liners, as when Josh stifles a smirk after remarking “I know this must be a lot to process” to Iris during their conversation about her identity.
Though the script has some fun surprises in addition to the central development, Companion suffers from uneven plotting that could’ve been ironed out with another pass or two through the screenplay. The film isn’t exactly a horror movie — at least in a traditional sense — but it suffers from the logic questions we come to expect from entries in the genre. It’s one thing to think “why doesn’t this character do this instead?” when everyone is human but when supposedly super-intelligent beings are in play, it seems fair to expect them to make smarter choices. There’s also a subplot surrounding a large sum of money that feels like it’s out of a different movie about criminals getting in over their heads. Without giving away much about the ending, once Iris comes into focus as the protagonist, it becomes apparent there’s really only one way this story can conclude.
With starring roles in chillers like The Boogeyman and last year’s Heretic, Sophie Thatcher gives her most fleshed-out performance yet as the movie’s titular counterpart. She imbues Iris with obsequious mannerisms that gradually morph into crafty calculations as her deference to Josh dissipates. Following up on a bongo-banging supporting turn in Oppenheimer, Jack Quaid carries over his easy charm here for something decidedly less laid-back and more desperately controlling. Lukas Gage had a small but not insignificant role in Smile 2 and he brings just the right level of camp here as his character evolves during the storyline. It’s not the best version of itself that it could be but as is, Companion is a cheeky companion to hard sci-fi like Ex Machina and Blade Runner that examines relationships between humans and robots.
Score – 3/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Heart Eyes, a romcom slasher starring Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, following a pair of co-workers working late on Valentine’s Day, who are mistaken for a couple and sent running for their lives by the infamous Heart Eyes Killer.
Also playing only in theaters is Love Hurts, an action comedy starring Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose, telling the story of a successful realtor whose past as a violent hitman comes back to haunt him when his former partner reveals that his brother is hunting him.
Streaming on Netflix is Kinda Pregnant, a comedy starring Amy Schumer and Jillian Bell, about a woman who becomes jealous of her friend’s pregnancy and begins to wear a false pregnant belly, a ruse that’s complicated after she meets the man of her dreams.