Be warned, major spoilers for “Companion” follow.
Ryan Coogler’s vampire film “Sinners” made a deserved smash at the box office this weekend, but audiences who stayed home got to enjoy a different Warner Bros.-distributed horror picture: Drew Hancock’s “Companion,” which joined streaming service Max on Friday, April 18 and has since become its no. 1 ranked movie. In “Companion,” Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) are a seemingly picture-perfect young couple. The movie opens with their meet-cute, and Iris, head over heels, narrates that meeting Josh was the first moment in her life she felt true purpose. The second? “The day I killed him.”
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Zach Cregger, director of the 2022 horror film “Barbarian,” was a producer on “Companion.” Like that picture, “Companion” makes a huge swerve after its first act, turning into a completely different movie than you’d expected. Unlike “Barbarian,” where the secrets stayed locked up tight until release, the “Companion” marketing team spoiled this twist in the film’s trailers. If you’ve avoided hearing it, now is your last chance to watch the movie unspoiled.
Okay! 30-ish minutes in, “Companion” reveals that Iris is a robot. In the near future, the company Empathix mass-produces life-like “companions” for the lonely. Iris didn’t meet Josh by chance in a grocery store, he rented her as a substitute for a living and breathing girlfriend. It’s suggested he picked her name from the song “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, a song all about the kind of total devotion that Josh expects from Iris. She’s happy to give it … until Josh sets her up to be assaulted by their host Sergey (Rupert Friend). Iris kills him in self-defense, just as Josh expected. (He wants to steal Sergey’s fortune and leave Iris to be the fall gal). Although Iris’ memories are pre-programmed, her personality is all too real, and the film becomes about her struggle for freedom.
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“Companion” fits neatly into other AI films such as “Ex Machina” and “Her.” They’re all about men seeking affection from the artificial. Men like Josh see women as dolls anyway, so of course he chooses a mate he can custom mold, and who won’t expect him to better himself. Iris growing into a person, not a program, is inextricable from a message of women’s liberation.
But when “Companion” preaches, you can practically see the choir. The movie’s social commentary is correct, but it recites old perspectives instead of adding new ones. However, if the movie is a bit shallow, it’s also super entertaining. “Companion” is a tight roller coaster thriller; what it lacks in thematic surprises, it makes up for in narrative ones, and has a deft comic touch.
The anchor that holds the movie together is undoubtedly Thatcher, or as I like to call her, future Emmy winner Sophie Thatcher.
