WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
The internet as we now know it today was built on a foundation of dehumanizing and objectifying women. The earliest version of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook was called “Facemash,” and was a hot-or-not site where users could look at the student ID photos of college girls and determine which woman was more attractive. Before Jeff Bezos spent millions acquiring IMDb, it was a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group “rec.arts.movies,” and the “ACTRESS LIST” was loaded with men debating the hottest women in cinema. A cropped image of Lena Forsén from the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine was the first image ever turned into a JPG file, and the fact Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl wasn’t readily available is what inspired the launch of YouTube.
Simply put, the tech industry has always been filled with a bunch of pathetic losers who can’t get laid and have decided to make it all of our problems while simultaneously deeming themselves the arbiters of women’s value, so a film like Companion is a life raft to cling to as we all desperately try to keep ourselves from drowning in the fascist tech-broligarchy of Trump’s second administration.
As the trailer for the film already reveals, Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is the AI love-bot of Josh (Jack Quaid), but until a weekend getaway with all of “their” friends goes awry, Iris does not know that she’s a programmable partner. This realization is world-shattering for her, but it only gets worse when she learns how Josh has programmed her. Fortunately, the response is a clever, compelling, and cathartic bloodbath.
Written and directed by Drew Hancock, Companion lulls the audience in with a sense of familiarity as Iris and Josh meet their friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage), and Kat (Megan Suri) at the home of her older, eccentric millionaire boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend) for a weekend away. The couples sip wine and share their meet-cute stories, with Iris revealing that she and Josh had a picturesque chance meeting in the produce section at the grocery store, the kind of painfully adorable plotline usually reserved for Hallmark Original Movies. And that’s because it never happened; the encounter was chosen by Josh to be part of the couple’s narrative. Everything Iris knows is something she’s been programmed to believe or something her limited intelligence settings have been permitted to learn from the internet — like the weather forecast for the day.
Sophie Thatcher has made a name for herself in the horror world thanks to Yellowjackets, The Boogeyman, MaXXXine, and Heretic, but Companion is her finest performance yet. Iris is a commanding role that requires her to walk the line between human and android, her personality and skillset shifting constantly as her settings adjust. In lesser hands, Iris would be difficult to empathize with, but Thatcher’s delivery puts the audience on her side from the very beginning. The crown of Good For Her horror cinema has been passed on, and Thatcher now reigns as our queen for 2025.
Jack Quaid remains one of the horror genre’s most consistent presences, weaponizing his “Aw, shucks” sensibilities into a character we hope will deservedly get his shit rocked before the credits roll. Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage bring much of the film’s best chuckles because, despite its heavy themes and graphic violence, Companion never forgets to be laugh-out-loud hilarious. Hancock has perfected the dance of shifting tones, earning every bit of the “from the studio that brought you The Notebook, and the creators of Barbarian,” endorsements. Sleek, savvy, and packed with effective scares, whoever said January was a dumping ground for horror movies is a fool, because Companion has set the bar as the best horror film of the year (so far).
Horror is no stranger to tales of robot girlfriends, with Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend featuring a young boy reviving his crush by putting his robot’s consciousness in her corpse, and of course, everyone’s new bestie M3GAN, but Companion’s true power is that it’s grounded in a Twilight Zone-esque sense of realism that feels like an inevitability. This isn’t just a fun horror movie, it’s a warning of what is to come to those who foolishly believe the cure to the “male loneliness epidemic” is programmable sexbots and government-issued girlfriends. Be careful what you wish for, incels, because the monkey’s paw will curl for you too, and you’ll deserve it.
ChatGPT already offers AI girlfriend chatbots, life-sized sex dolls are getting more realistic by the day, and as the comedic performance art special Courtney Pauroso: Vanessa 5000 warned us last year, we’re inching closer and closer to a reality where AI companions will become indistinguishable from actual women.
If this is to be our future, I hope it plays out like Companion.
