Companion

4 outta 5

Companion is a clever and subversive sci-fi horror thriller about romance, robots, murder and software manipulation. While the notion of someone falling in love with a robotic artificial intelligence has been done in films like Her or Ex Machina, this is still a distinct take. Companion is less about potential robotic apocalypse and instead more like a meet cute romantic comedy gone horribly wrong with robotic homocide. There are great performances, twists, unexpected splatter and quips that offer some unexpected moments of humour in a very chaotic robot love/hate story.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is on an elaborate getaway with her boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid), to a fabulous lake house where they meet up with the owner, Sergey (Rupert Friend), his girlfriend Kat (Megan Suri), Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage). Josh and Iris seem to be a perfect couple, as Iris absolutely adores Josh. But when Iris ends up committing a bloody murder, Josh tells her the truth: she isn’t human, she is actually a companion robot. And Josh has modified her to do certain things, things that would not only void her warranty and his rental agreement, but they are setting her up to take the fall for the murder. As he can control her with an app on his phone, she must listen to anything he says. But when she grabs his phone and escapes into the wilderness, they try to track her down. But Iris can now turn her own intelligence level to max and outwit them all.

The script has cool revelations along the way. It starts off like a relationship comedy, although there is a nagging sense that Iris is a bit too perfect, as she has interesting quirks like when Josh asks her about the weather, she immediately responds like a weather app. Sergey as the Russian rich guy soon reveals he is a terrible person. Friend is an actor who often goes for big swings, so when Iris strikes back it feels righteous. Which makes the twist hit even harder when Josh reveals that she is a robot and not a “real person”.

The robot reveal scene is riveting as it is mostly just Quaid and Thatcher opposite each other. Quaid plays Josh as kind of a wuss, but he has a mean streak. He tries to tell Iris gently that she is a robot and then eventually it gets freaky as he demonstrates he can manipulate her with the app. The craziest part is when he starts switching between her various language settings as she is shocked that she keeps responding perfectly in different languages. Their “meet cute” is a corny bit about Josh toppling oranges at a grocery store and it turns out to be an utter fabrication. Iris is heartbroken, insisting that it actually happened, and Josh says that he just randomly selected it from a drop-down menu.

The flashback of when Josh first booted her up where she goes from robot to loving girlfriend in a few moments, is both funny and chilling. She may not be human, but seeing her dehumanized as a piece of software to be manipulated is shocking. She ends up going through the app options for customization of everything from her eye colour to intelligence, as Iris gets annoyed that Josh set her to 40% intelligence. What is even worse is how Josh has hacked her to make her do things, as much as he tries to treat her as “real”, the whole scheme is based upon manipulating her code.

The movie has some tonal shifts that keep it lively, as it opens as a romantic farce and then turns to bloody sci-fi robot carnage unleashed. Also, while the story is dark, there is still a lot of room for funny lines, like when Josh’s friends are shocked that he hacked his own robot. The bursts of violence are intense, like an incredibly messy bit where a cop is disarmed, or how Iris accidentally ends up killing people in self defence. She seems as shocked as anyone that it keeps happening. Thatcher’s performance is fantastic as her robot switches on and off various emotional states. Since she can’t lie, she has to find ways around it leading to a funny scene where she finds a cop and changes her language setting to German so she doesn’t reveal what has been going on. By the end she engages in a process of self-actualization which involves a lot of violence which is a staple of the sci-fi thriller genre. Quaid as Josh slowly reveals his despicable personality as the film goes on. As for the buddies, Suri as Kat is very snarky and Guillén as Eli has amusingly exasperated responses (something he has been good at in What We Do in the Shadows) and unexpected heartfelt moments with his boyfriend, which makes the plot twists tragic. Gage as Patrick the boyfriend starts off kind of generic and then is part of some truly wild and shocking narrative turns that keep the third act riveting.

Companion makes the robot more human than any of the actual humans, as the audience sees Iris grow from toy girlfriend to fully functional person. Sure, more than a few people get splattered along the way but it is worth it.