With pink embellishments and cute outfits in the photos to advertise the newly released “Companion,” the film’s plot and story could never have crossed my mind. The “Black Mirror”-esque film, filled with blood and robots realizing their consciousness, makes the story quite fun to watch and impresses the audience with how gory it can get, fitting itself into the silly category of “good for her.” This category is where our main female lead is able to come forward and get back at the people who have done her wrong, ensuring they get a taste of their own medicine.
“Companion,” directed by Drew Hancock and starring Sophie Thatcher, shows us a couple going to a house deep in the woods, joining a friend’s trip with four other buddies of theirs at Sergey’s Lakehouse. The movie makes a sharp turn, changing from the sweet and cute tone of romance and comedy to the realization that Iris, our main character, is a robot and is especially known as a romantic companion to Josh, her boyfriend and owner. From there we see how she starts a spread of blood, though not totally by her own choice, but to escape from being reprogrammed and forgetting all her memories. This film also discusses the ethics of “feeling,” even though programmed, and whether or not something that is programmed to feel can be considered human.
The fun choice this movie took was that the plot twist was revealed quite early, at around 1/3 of the watch time, making the leftover of the film a focus on many of the flashbacks of how the robots get programmed and how their memories with their loved ones are completely fake. This opens the possibility of a bunch more small plot twists in the remainder of the duration and allows us to clearly see the motives of the other characters and what they wish to achieve from the planned murder of the owner of the Lakehouse.
Sophie Thatcher, who starred in the also reviewed “Heretic” of last year, does an amazing job at becoming this almost perfect woman with outfits heavily influenced by the 60’s and an almost Barbie presentation. Her switch up from almost automatic and fake responses as a robot, to a caring and in love character when she got programmed, to at the end becoming a hyperaware and “looking for her freedom” robot-woman. To any lover of slashers and older horror movies, Thatcher makes an amazing performance and brings memories and characteristics from them, as well as being reminiscent of the well-known “Final girl” trope.
The other ensemble members are really good, with standouts like Lukas Gage as another romantic companion, and Jack Quaid as Josh, the boyfriend of our main protagonist. Jack Quaid makes a very punchable and annoying character, making a good representation of a completely lame and annoying dude who thinks the whole world owes him something. A commentary on the objectification of women and what the future might look like joined with the loneliness epidemic many people of our generation might struggle with, makes the film a scary and campy, but at its basis, a completely real possibility in the future.
Companion is now available in film theaters all around the world, and I recommend it to anyone reading.
