Once upon a time, January was the well-known dumping ground for films that studios either didn’t have faith in or knew were bad. More recently, January isn’t just for Hollywood’s stinkers but instead a place for high-concept movies that studios don’t know what else to do with. Sometimes, these movies surprise everyone and become big hits. M3GAN (2023) came out the first Friday in January and, despite its $12 million budget, made over $180 million and earned a sequel slated for summer next year. This could happen with Drew Hancock’s Companion, but even though it has a great conceit, the movie falls into familiar tropes way too frequently.
In a lot of ways, the trailer for Companion entirely gives the game away. By the same token, that act one reveal essentially is the movie, so how do you not advertise that? A conundrum to be sure. But, I mean, “Sex Bot goes on a killing spree” is a pretty compelling elevator pitch, if certainly reductive. I’m not saying there’s nothing to like in the rest of the movie or that Hancock doesn’t find ways to explore that theme. But generally it goes very route one with just about everything else.
The movie stars Sophie Thatcher, coming off of a fantastic performance in last year’s Heretic playing Iris, a doting and devoted girlfriend to cute nice guy Josh (Jack Quaid). She is very nervous and self-conscious about spending the weekend at a remote cabin (really mansion) with Josh’s friends. These include the adorably devoted couple Patrick and Eli (Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillen) as well as free-spirit Kat (Megan Suri) and her ostensible boyfriend, Sergey (Rupert Friend), the owner of the house. Iris is especially nervous about Kat liking her, since Kat is very important to Josh.
A series of events transpire and Iris ends up committing a horrible act of violence (again, it’s in the trailer) and that’s when Josh reveals to her that she’s actually a robot. In fact, she’s a highly realistic, super advanced cybernetic artificial girlfriend. Further violence and reveals occur as Iris has to try to escape from humans desperate to shut her down now knowing she’s literally under the thumb of the man in her life, or the app he has on his phone at any rate.
The central metaphor of Companion couldn’t be clearer. It of course brings up ideas of women’s agency, of the misogyny of “nice guys,” and general self-actualization. To the movie’s credit, it’s a dark comedy and the comedic aspects are generally pretty effective. When Iris gets hold of Josh’s phone and learns that, on the intelligence scale from 0-100, he has Iris set at 40, which prompts her to give a fantastically dry “wooooooooow Josh.” I’m definitely on board with the message, I just think it’s unbelievably unsubtle about it. We love Iris and don’t love Josh with as little wiggle room as humanly possible.
Something Companion has over M3GAN, in my opinion, is that Companion pulls no punches. It’s exceedingly violent and full of swearing. It earns the R in the way a dark comedy/horror movie should. At the same time, the horror/thriller aspect of the movie goes exactly where you think it will, with only the parts designed for comedy really doing anything to add wrinkles.
So look, I enjoyed it. I think it’s a solidly fun movie with a really good cast. Thatcher is a captivating screen presence always and Quaid is right in his wheelhouse. The ads all flog that it comes from the producer of Barbarian, owing to that movie’s writer-director Zach Cregger as one of the producers. Smart marketing movie, but Companion is nothing like as scary or culturally incisive as Barbarian. Don’t go in expecting that level of WTF-ery and you’ll have a good time.
Companion hits theaters January 31.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
