Sophie Thatcher is finally in a good movie, “Companion” (2025)! She plays Iris, who is nervous about a late June weekend lakeside getaway with her boyfriend, Josh Beemer (Jack Quaid), and his friends. Josh’s friend, Kat (Megan Suri), invited them to stay at her Russian boyfriend’s place. Sergey (Rupert Friend) owns the gorgeous, private grounds. Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage), are as madly in love with each other as Iris is with Josh, but Josh seems to be a little less fervent in his feelings. Is love real or can it be a construct that distracts from full self-realization and recognizing your place in the world? Director and writer Drew Hancock delivers in his feature debut.
If you have not seen any promotions for “Companion,” then go see it now before you get spoiled. Like “Abigail” (2023), the trailers spoil the mystery behind the first third of the movie, and if you go into the movie not knowing it, you will enjoy the movie more. If you know, you will notice all the subtle clues that are obvious for spoiled moviegoers, and it is still riveting, but it is such a waste of a good twist. Iris is like a lot of women. She describes her boyfriend as if he is the second coming of Christ except upon meeting him, with all due respect to Quaid, dude is just some guy. Hancock leverages that universal experience to increase the tension regarding how Iris will wake up from her reverie and react to this discovery. Josh is the bedrock of her world. How will she react? Who will she be? Who will be or should be the foundational person in her life if it is not Josh?
Hancock presents as an American white man, and the story is so sympathetic to Iris even after he reveals why Josh and his friends do not treat her with the dignity and respect owed to any person, and their reasoning fits firmly in the bedrock of most sci-fi films. When someone gets introduced to a group as someone’s significant other, it is normal for the newest person to be defined in relation to the group member based on the function that person plays in the long-standing member’s life. Iris gets reduced to Josh’s possession just as some people never bother learning someone’s name and calls them a wife or girlfriend. While the reason for Iris’ status makes sense once revealed and explains why they keep her at arm’s length, it is more disturbing that no one questions the ethics of these situations in the real world or in the mythology of this world. Should any of these people like Josh considering how he treats Iris? Iris enthusiastically exists to make Josh happy, and Josh still treats her as if she is the problem. If she is not good enough and deserves Josh’s ire, no one will make the cut. He is a user, and none of his friends see it because they are users too though at varying levels.
If “Companion” sounds like the online discourse about bang maids and single women’s epiphany that relationships may not be worth the hassle, have no fear, it does not feel heavy-handed to watch. The ensemble cast recalibrates with each tone shift and revelation—there is more than one, and most will not see them coming. This film is the embodiment of “wait, there is more.” Thatcher plays a woman trying to keep it together on a good day, but once she confirms that her unsettling feeling is not unfounded and stops talking herself into believing that everything is alright, her resolve to survive and accept her new reality while still feeling the pain is a universally relatable journey. Thatcher’s physical and emotional arc is rigorous and demanded a lot out of her. There was never a doubt that she could be the lead in a movie since Thatcher delivers protagonist performances in flawed films like “The Boogeyman” (2023) and “Heretic” (2024).
Megan Suri, whom some may recognize as the protagonist in “It Lives Inside” (2023), was underutilized though she had a powerful impact when she did take center stage. Kat lacks empathy, but her last onscreen appearance coupled with Hancock’s decision to show Kat’s point of view was disproportionally more poignant than the character deserved. To dig into the rest of “Companion,” there will be
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Empathix Robotics manufactures empath robots, aka fuckbots or sexbots, and Josh and Eli rent and own Iris and Patrick respectively. If the mad scientist in “Ex Machina” (2014) succeeded and made the end of “The Stepford Wives” (1975) possible, but the machines never rose in “The Terminator” (1984) franchise because they love us too much, you get a sense of what they are like. There are also some “Blade Runner” (1982) references since the robots have different levels of sentience depending on their person’s setting preference. Patrick figures it out, and Iris does not. There is some tension whether Patrick hates Iris after she kills to protect herself, but Patrick does not care about his or anyone else’s existence because he is satisfied with his partner. This dynamic was really interesting because it reflects what studies were beginning to show: same sex couples are happier than heterosexual couples because of the level playing field at home. Iris and Patrick share one characteristic: their description of love sounds painful. For Iris, her default feeling in the world is insecurity and vulnerability whereas Patrick (perhaps an ode to Robert Patrick from “Terminator 2: The Rise of the Machines” (1991) and later Gage does wear a sheriff’s uniform) is used as a weapon and tool.
Gage and Guillén make their characters into the heart and humor of “Companion” while still being awful. Eli sees Patrick as a person but treats Iris as an object and does not see her as a person because she does not serve him. Guillén makes Eli into a likeable person even though he is callous and treating a woman who fought against a potential rapist as a person worthy of being tied up, dragged away and killed because she is a machine. So theoretically if he had no relationship to Patrick, he would not see him as a person so is he really in love if it is not the person who elicits your affection, but their function, i.e. what they do? It also explains a fascinating real life demographic issue. Some gay men retain the privileges of cis, straight men; thus, they can exhibit the same misogyny that some heterosexual men inflict on the women of the world, which explains some conflicts within the LGBTQ+ community. Minority status should not be equated with solidarity, and Patrick never has a moment of solidarity. He is completely stuck in his own situation and unable to see beyond it whereas Iris is eager to spread the gospel of liberation and by the end, is proudly displaying her robot pride. She is not a Magneto type even though she prefers her real appearance. She only wants to live and not be a sex slave.
Because of her status as a robot, Iris is deemed unrapable. In the real world, specifically the US, historically Black women unwillingly occupied that role as well as wives. Throughout “Companion,” the characters try to explain to her how she does not deserve human rights because she is not a human being, but it is a short walk to how human women are told that they do not have rights, because of their gender. Iris innately knows that these assertions are not true, which is why this movie is fiction because a lot of women will happily agree, especially when it comes to bodily autonomy.
The Quaid men are a little too good at playing horrible people—talking to you Daddy Dennis in “The Substance” (2024). Imagine being dissatisfied with a being whose only purpose in life is to make you happy, and you only want to hurt them. The biggest hint was when Josh made her go to the weekend trip even though she was anxious and instructed her to “smile and act happy.” A happy woman in a perfect relationship would not be as stressed as Iris was. That woman was the queen of the strained, twitchy smile. Also the gradual unveiling of his loser bag qualities worked even though it was obvious. Anyone who uses a sexbot is innately sus. If your robot dumps you, you are a mess. It seems as if it is Jack’s year, and his agent is determined to turn him into a movie star since he will have another release soon, “Novocaine” (2025).
Hancock is also a gorgeous movie. Iris presents as a little old fashioned, deliberately retro in contrast to the hyper modern, casual or sophisticated style of the others. Hancock’s visual marker is to pair softness and warmth in contrast to the brutality of the situation. By the end of trying to run away, her outfit is dark and shows no trace of the white and pink. Hancock also uses flashbacks perfectly. Normally I hate redundancy, but here, telling a story then repeatedly showing or telling something with a slight difference has an impact regarding the character’s inner life. Hancock also uses it to illustrate how Iris starts planning her escape through visualization and how the language of images, not words, is the way the brain’s default. It was a nice touch to put the human being and robots on an even playing field in terms of strength and intelligence, but they never see what the robots have no awareness of how they look like when they are offline. They resemble the demon that science creates: the eyes, the voice changes, the ability to speak in different tongues. It makes sense that people would find them a little frightening, but Iris and Patrick would not understand because they will always be unaware of a portion of their existence. From the beginning of “Companion,” before she was conscious, Iris thanked the car, which was self-driving and felt like a reference to “Upgrade” (2018), but in her thoughts, they are friends, and the car cheers her on. It is adorable. Hope that she finds some fellow robot friends
