Watching a movie without seeing the trailer beforehand could wind up in disaster. However, this time, it led me on a ride with enough twists and turns to keep me locked in. Drew Hancock’s Companion is one of the few Valentine-themed thrillers that premiered this year. Companion is a New Line Cinema production starring Sophie Thatcher (from ShowTime’s Yellowjackets), who plays Iris, and Jack Quaid (from Paramount’s Scream 5) as Josh, who appears to be in a perfect relationship. This AMC Artisan Film follows the relationship that brings a new level of complexity to love and relationships in this science fiction thriller.
The spark these two had when they met gave me the feeling they were built for one another. Josh and Iris planned a weekend retreat with 4 of his friends at one of their lake houses. Iris finds herself alone with the owner of the lake house, Sergey. When he tries to make a perverse move on her, it ends in the un-aliving of Sergey. Distraught, Iris makes her way back inside the house, where she confesses to Josh what happened and gets so worked up that he enables her to shut down. Not metaphorically, but literally. She is a realistic fembot, an “emotional support robot” programmed through a “love link.” Once Josh powers her back up, he reveals to her that she is not human and is programmed to love him and do anything to make him happy.
After revealing the truth about her identity, he gets dragged into the other room by his friend Kat, where it is uncovered that Josh created a computer modification program that manipulated the situation so Iris would kill Sergey. There are 12 million dollars worth of cold hard cash in Sergey’s safe. Motive enough. While this is being revealed, Iris is able to escape. In the midst of her plan for freedom, she was able to get hold of Josh’s phone which had an app that controlled Iris’s features from eye color, tone of voice, language, and intelligence. Seeing that Josh had set her intelligence level to 40%, she quickly amplified it to reach 100%.
Now, it’s a battle between a brilliantly minded artificial intelligence and an ex-lover consumed by the greed of wealth.
With the rise of AI and Tesla’s new robots being manufactured, these advanced robotic specimens of this movie have the potential to become reality in the coming years. This film shares themes as complex as the relationship between Iris and Josh. It enhances what feels like the majority cis male-heterosexual expectations are from their life/sexual partners. It brings to light the perspectives of those who are blinded by their love for their partner and would do anything to make them happy, even murder. Iris’s battle to obtain free will gives a great visual representation of the complicity of feeling absolutely everything and nothing simultaneously. This thriller is the perfect mixture of suspense and comedy stemming from the irony of an artificially made robot having more humanity than the human who programmed her.
As a fan of the horror genre and all its sub-genres, I can honestly say this film unmasks a human’s greed as the scariest monster from any creature feature. I found myself rooting for the robot for the entire film – and not just because I’m a girl’s girl. I rooted for the girl who was gaslit and used by her boyfriend for their entire relationship. The girl who loved her partner with everything they possibly possessed but didn’t receive the same reciprocation of love.
This is the perfect movie for people who love the thrill of a suspenseful plot but can do without the gore. Or for the person who realizes once they put their own happiness as life’s first priority, that is when they truly begin to live. Lastly, I give major props to the actors who had to portray a character that changes everything about their mannerisms at the tap of a screen. An hour and thirty-seven minute travel time is what it takes to complete this journey of discovering yourself for the first time.
