Whimsically Vicious Companion Dreams of Electric Autonomy
At the beginning of Companion, the beguiling Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is introduced aimlessly wandering down the aisles of a suspiciously empty supermarket pushing a shopping cart and immaculately gussied up like some technicolor stereotype of a mid-20th-century suburban housewife. She’s gorgeous. She’s alluring. She’s the type of woman meet-cutes involving a coy smile here and a tumbling pile of ripe oranges in the produce department were made for.
This is an obvious reference to both 1975’s and 2004’s cinematic adaptations of The Stepford Wives written by Ira Levin. Because of this, it should be readily apparent that writer-director Drew Hancock has something he wants to say with his cleverly flirtatious comedic sci-fi thriller.
The film is playful, and it oftentimes has its tongue planted firmly in cheek. Yet there is also no question its violence is over-the-top and the gore — while mostly kept to a deliberate minimum — is almost flippantly cartoonish. But it’s all in service to pointed social commentary aimed directly at the post-Gamergate crowd and misogynistic tech film bros, I’d I’ll be curious to see if they get that all this of this story’s deathly serious undertones are pointed directly right at them.
Iris is the doting girlfriend of mild-mannered dweeb Josh (Jack Quaid). They’ve been invited to spend the weekend at Russian businessman Sergey’s (Rupert Friend) secluded lakefront (“I don’t own the lake…I just own all of the land around the lake…”) property by his girlfriend, and Josh’s best friend, Kat (Megan Suri). They are joined on this couple’s retreat by another mutual acquaintance, Eli (Harvey Guillén). He’s brought along his culinary wunderkind beau Patrick (Lukas Gage) who is surprisingly eager to cook for them all during their two-day escape from all outside world concerns.
There is a reason Iris is so all-consumed by Josh’s well-being to the point of it being creepy: She’s not human. The young woman is a perfectly designed cybernetic emotional companion. One could even go so far as to call her a “sexbot,” and Josh can update her in almost every way he’d like. Intelligence. Personality. Even eye color. He has it all in the palm of his hand, every aspect of who Iris is controlled by an app on his cellphone.
I reveal this aspect of the plot mainly because the picture’s advertising makes it a point to disclose this information. But I’m not going to say anything more beyond that other than to confirm that things do indeed go wrong during this group’s weekend of fun and frivolity, at least one death is involved, and Iris is at the center of it all. Anything more than that, though? Nope. I’m not going there. This is one film that refuses to reveal all its cards until the last second it has to.
Some of the transitions between comedy, action, suspense, and outright horror are a little disjointed, and the constant shifts in tone will keep some viewers at arm’s length (as will the sudden outbursts of spirited ultraviolence). There’s a bit with an open hand and a lit candle that goes on sadistically long. I also found a roadside jolt of gory pulverization that, while well staged, was still undeniably excessive in sort of an Evil Dead Sam Raimi sort of way.
It can also be said that none of the film’s themes are particularly subtle. He places cis male (and mostly white) toxic masculinity under the microscope and unsurprisingly doesn’t like what is revealed. Hancock flips a brash middle finger at conservative whack-a-dos who would rather live in a fascist 1950s dreamscape than in a progressive modern society that holds them accountable for all of their selfishly entitled actions. There’s nothing understated about any of this.
Admittedly, very little about any of that bothered me. A lot of the fun of Companion comes from knowing exactly who and what Hancock is directly the majority of his vitriol at. While few of the characters could be described as being free from guilt or blame when the story’s bloody carnage begins and the reasons behind it happening in the first place are energetically revealed, there are notable layers to the overall culpability. Some let personal ambition and greed overrule common sense, but only for a precious few minutes. Others, however, have so much direct involvement that their hands will be forever red, and it is they who Hancock takes the most delight in collapsing this frail metaphorical glass house of cards directly on top of.
Performances are solid across the board, with Guillén and Gage having a moment of unexpected introspection so tender, so authentically heartfelt, that it brought a sudden tear to my eye. Both Friend and Suri also have their respective moments, the former when he’s coyly talking about the various unnamed businesses that have made him so wealthy, the latter much later on when Kat realizes things have taken a disastrous turn and all she can do is shrink down on the couch and flippantly laugh at the perverse masochistic tragedy slowly enveloping all of them.
As for Quaid, he’s great, but the less said about his role the better. Josh’s journey should be experienced free of expectation and with as little foreshadowing as possible. Just know the young actor has dug inside his character with twinkly-eyed abhorrent relish, and it’s clear he’s having a blast breathing life into this greedily whiny hellion.
But, make no mistake, this enterprise is a showcase for Thatcher, and she is more than up to the challenge. Iris is a tough nut to crack. Is she human? Is she a machine? Are her reactions and emotions real? Or is it all just programming, complex bits of cybernetic code that make this questioning entity whose only desire is to understand what is happening to her and why something straight out of popular fiction like Blade Runner or Westworld? More human than human, if you will.
Thatcher is divine. The way she moves her body. The limber, sometimes disorganized, and even uncoordinated, ways her arms and legs flail around and do not always work in concert. How she’ll suddenly get back a level of precision and balletic athleticism that gives her an ethereal grace that’s downright otherworldly. Thatcher couples all of this with a naïve emotional introspection that she then marries up to a determined inner fury that’s striking. It’s a superb performance.
Things do go incredibly nuts, and there’s never any doubt that the actual villain cluelessly orchestrating this madness will receive exactly what is coming to them. But Hancock refuses to take the obvious path to get there, and by having the story viewed primarily through Iris’ point of view, there’s a childlike wonderment to all of this madness I found delightful. There’s nothing robotic about Companion.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
