Companion Movie, directed by Drew Hancock, and starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, is a satirical science fiction horror film about human relationships, love, truth and lies. In theaters from January 30, 2025.
The first thing to say about Companion is that it is not easy to label; it is a good starting point. Written and directed by Drew Hancock, in theaters in Italy from January 30, 2025, for Warner Bros. Pictures Italia, the film runs on the edge of a rather detailed citations (cinematographic and otherwise, also literary) to tell us a story suspended between pure spectacle, reflection and work on genres.
It is science fiction, it is a thriller, it has a sadistic and bloody propulsion that brings it closer to the perimeter of horror - even if it cannot be called standard horror - but it is also and above all an emblematic, perversely ironic, sentimental comedy. It struggles to hold everything together, we'll see why later, but it's not negligible and has a good cast: Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets), Jack Quaid (The Boys), Rupert Friend, Megan Suri, Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillén.
Companion: not the usual love story
The where and when of Companion are deliberately out of focus. The viewer has to make do with the little information he receives, but it's not a problem because it's enough to keep up with the film and its ambitions, more solid on paper than in execution (but that's another story). Companion cultivates the idea of a not-too-distant future - with an aseptic, retro and suffocating elegance - and technologically advanced, which speaks to the fears of our present.
A future populated by machines, so perfect as to replace man and moreover with a certain difficulty in distinguishing the former from the latter. This is the time of the film. Space is an elegant house somewhere in the woods. Isolation serves the story to preserve fear, suspense, biting irony, and keep its purity intact.
The villa belongs to a very shady rich Russian, Sergey (Ruper Friend). He has organized a weekend of leisure in the company of his lover Kat (Megan Suri) and two couples: Eli (Harvey Guillén) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid).
The film is the story of Iris and Josh, especially Iris. The first meeting, the tender embarrassment, the trust in a love that will overcome any test, sex: it has it all. Iris is a reasonable, clean person. Her feelings are not a compromise, she loves with passion and sincerity. She doesn't know how to deal with her boyfriend's doubts and double truths, because she is different from him. Literally.
Companion bases its story – hybrid in themes, fluid in form, maliciously amused – on a twist conveyed with studied nonchalance to maximize its effect: Iris is not one of us. She is a robot, modeled on the tastes, orientations and preferences of the humans to whom she will have to dedicate herself body and soul.
Another way of saying it is that Iris is a sex machine, a technologically sophisticated slave, unaware of her condition (the acquisition of awareness is the spring that triggers her desire for emancipation) and modeled so as not to overwhelm the will and desires of her partner.
The girl ends up in the hands of the creative and morally ambiguous Josh, who has criminal aims and hacks her skills to make her do the dirty work for him. Things will not go as the dishonest boyfriend had hoped. Iris becomes aware of herself and the world around her and begins a singular, violent, self-deprecating fight for emancipation.
Premises and final result do not match entirely
City of Wives (novel) meets I, Robot (novel) which meets Westworld (film and TV series) which meets… the typical romantic comedy. There is a nice mix of influences that structure the themes and narrative arc of Companion.
The film is always balanced between atmospheres and suggestions typical of an intelligent and provocative genre of cinema (the 70s or so) and more superficial and harmless spectacular pretensions, in a word damned modern. Drew Hancock writes and directs a horror, dystopian sci-fi, a satirical date movie with double standards.
Ambitious in its premises, because not everyone can use the forms and the captivating (especially for a young audience) appeal of entertainment cinema to talk about emancipation (emotional and otherwise), the imbalance of power inherent in every relationship, the relationship between man and machine and the distinction, philosophically central and very ambiguous, between reality and artifice.
Timid and a bit inconclusive in its results, because beyond the stereotypical action - this is not the point, for the film, and the defect is easily forgiven - and an inconsistent pace, Companion has no interest in developing its reflections.
In part it is predictable, considering the spectacular nature of the proposal; however, the unwillingness to work on the ambitious premise to enhance its dramatic potential is striking. That is to say, everything that can be drawn from the premise to build a good story.
Companion is an anachronistic film in its reference to a cinema and literature capable of combining genre and reflection, modern in its reluctance to offer its audience anything more than self-indulgent entertainment.
There is much in the film that is didactic and two-dimensional, and few occasions (the robot that “plays” with its abilities to get out of trouble) in which one really wants to use Iris’s otherness – she is not human and her emotions have a purity and integrity that contrast with the cynicism and duplicity of those around her – to build an original story, popular in its vocation for entertainment, intelligent in its thought and ambitious in its claims.
The elegance of the packaging, the suggestive bridge between present anxieties and the photography of a dystopian future, and the reflection on love, power and reality, give way to entertainment that betrays itself a bit. A solid and frustrating film, because it chooses to limit itself even though it could have done otherwise.
Companion: evaluation and conclusion
There is a beautiful alchemy between the reassuring exterior and the sweet insecurity of Sophie Thatcher - gradually leaving room for an increasingly marked mastery and control of the situation - and the apparently harmless clumsiness of a Jack Quaid here in the version of a toxic, immature and fervent-minded male.
Companion and Drew Hancock exploit the ingenious premise for what it can offer on a purely superficial level; the result is a film that is courageous upstream but fearful downstream. The entertainment is of good quality, and the basic idea is appreciable, but the (cinematic) game between reflection and spectacle ends with a clear victory for the latter. More balance is needed, sometimes a good draw is all you need.