‘Companion’ Resets the Concept of the Horror Rom-com
You do not want to read this review of Companion. Trust us.
We only say this because writer-director Drew Hancock’s movie relies on more than a few secrets, and even though the film’s trailer more or less gives away a big one, we’re not keen on spoiling them just yeat. (It’s perfectly safe to watch the teaser below, however.) What we can say, without fear of enraging folks keen on experiencing the film as it unfolds one “whoa!” at a time, is that everything starts with the most basic premise imaginable: Boy meets girl.
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She is Iris (Sophie Thatcher), just your everyday lonelyhearts looking for love and, since she’s in the grocery store, fresh fruit. He is Josh (The Boys‘ Jack Quaid), a cute doofus who’s also wandering through the produce section. Their eyes meet. The connection is instant. He’s so flustered that he knocks over a carton of peaches. Meet-cutes don’t get much cuter than this. If you’re lucky, Iris says in a dreamy voiceover, you feel those transcendent moments of bliss and purpose once in your life. She notes that she has experienced them twice. The first was when she met Josh. The second was when she killed him.
No, that’s not the big “whoa!” — but already, in the first five minutes, Hancock is relishing the opportunities to fuck with us. Even the film’s pretty, Barbie-pink title font is a feint. We fast-forward to what feels like several months into Iris and Josh’s relationship, with the two of them heading for a weekend away with his friends. Apparently, Josh’s old college pal Kat (Megan Suri) is hooking up with Sergei (Rupert Friend), an older, Russian billionaire with a “cabin on the woods” that’s really more of a huge, tricked-out mansion in the middle of nowhere. The couple is going to join them, along with Eli (What We Do in the Shadows’ Harvey Guillén) and his hot boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage), for a luxurious getaway. Iris is, admittedly, a little nervous. She can tell Kat doesn’t like her. And the fact that Sergei keeps openly leering at her isn’t helping matters.
Still, Iris would do anything for Josh, so she tries to go with the flow even when the vibe is either hostile or weird. One thing leads to another, and as is common with such hedonistic reunions among longtime buddies, somebody ends up with a switchblade in their neck. Here’s where things start to get a little dodgy in terms of what we can and can’t talk about when we talk about Companion, so if you’re allergic to major spoilers, we’ll see you later. Go! Run! Run to the hills, people!
So: When Iris comes to Josh, covered in blood and freaking out, her boyfriend says three simple words to calm her: “Go to sleep.” Sure enough, she shuts down. Like, literally shuts down. Because Iris is a robot, or more specifically, she’s like if Apple designed androids built for romance — a sort of iSoulmate, complete with a command app that allows Josh to control her through his smart phone. He’s also purchased a black-market “mod” on a flash drive that allows Iris to circumvent any and all guardrails her parent company has installed. Like, say, her inability to harm human beings. Hence, all that blood.
This is all part of bigger scheme that Josh and co. are planning, and from here, Hancock starts to throw a lot of other genres into the pot: heist thrillers, slasher flicks, cockeyed screwball comedy, Westworld-style sci-fi that puts the “AI” in paranoia, broad (and we do mean broad) social satire. But it’s that initial mix of heavenly romance and horror tropes that fuels Companion, even when things get a little shaky in the last act. Cleverness can only get you so far, especially if things threaten to devolve into a Black Mirror episode extended close to its breaking point.
Still, the filmmaker drops a lot of breadcrumbs, the kind which reward a second viewing. And having already proven her scary-movie bona fides with last year’s Heretic, Thatcher does a lot of the heavy lifting here, and brings a real sense of brokenhearted bewilderment, existential dread, and eventually, an avenging-angel sense of righteousness to Iris. The phrase “scream queen” has been thankfully reclaimed from those who’d use it to deride performers in genre movies, and Thatcher has easily earned the right to wear the crown with the best of them. There’s a real bruised soul in her ‘bot. As with so many of her sentient ancestors, be they anti-heroic automatons or Silicon-chip crusaders, Iris manages to outmaneuver and outwit her flesh-and-blood tormentors. Somewhere, Brigitte Helm is beaming with “you go, sister!” pride.
What gives this pulpy creation such a savory flavor and lasting bite isn’t just the puncturing of romantic clichés cemented 24 frames per second over decades, or the low-hanging-fruit pokes at society’s reliance on technology taken to extremes. It’s the way it makes you suddenly start questioning the whole notion of finding your soulmate if, given the opportunity, you can just purchase them and pay on installment. This isn’t a new idea, mind you, and feel free to insert your own late-capitalism dig here. But even when Companion simply wants to entertain you, the film keeps getting under your skin about outsourcing one of the last true vestiges of humanity to the Tech Bro Industrial Complex. To paraphrase a famous logline: Love means never having to your sorry if you can occasionally hit the reset button.
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