While I intentionally avoid trailers nowadays whenever possible — they sometimes give too much away, especially for genre films — it wasn’t hard to figure out Companion’s deal. The title alone should be a dead giveaway. And in the film itself, director Drew Hancock practically spells it out for audiences with outset clues that are less wink-wink and more thudding. Once past that section, one where you’re supposed to act oblivious, the real story begins. And that’s where Companion shapes up to be a fine but not stellar slab of social-cum-technological horror.
Companion can be applauded for not taking the same path as similar recent films, particularly ones made in M3GAN’s footsteps. Rather than computers going haywire on humanity, the concept of dangerous human and AI relationships is flipped on its head. Thoughts of sympathetic stories of AI-beings trickle in as Sophie Thatcher’s character Iris is revealed to be a gynoid who is not only now learning of her origins, but also her unsavory new purpose in life. When she’s not an expensive plaything for Jack Quaid’s loathsome Josh, she’s being used as the weapon in a murder plot.
Knowing the first-act twist ahead of time is bound to upset some viewers, however, the remaining story is amusing enough to make up for that briefest of spoilage. And if we’re being honest here, Companion only finds a better foot to stand on once the jig is up and we move into the ramifications of the AI reveal. The B-plot of Josh and his pals’ murder scheme is not all that interesting — I imagine it’s not supposed to be — so we have no choice but to go with Iris on her journey of self-awareness.
Now, there was a time when a robot becoming sentient would have tugged at my heartstrings. After all, it just seemed unlikely to see that degree of artificial intelligence ever come into being, so I cried and laughed along with everyone else. These days I’m far more cynical, owing to the fact that a lot of AI technology feels more invasive than helpful, not to mention unethical. Surely that hot-button issue was on Drew Hancock’s mind as he made Companion. A few too many filmmakers have conceded to the notion that subtlety is dead, on account of how loud and unavoidable a lot of life’s problems are today. So why even bother being delicate anymore? Hancock isn’t entirely absolved here, but at the same time, he doesn’t get so carried away with his message that he forgot to put a story around it.
So even though there seems to be a mixed message here — AI is good and deserves to live, and it’s humans that are bad — the outcome is not deep enough to feel bothered by it. Regardless of where you stand on the AI debate, the implications here are thinly made and, frankly, a bit silly. Hancock never even reaches the thematic depths he craves, largely because the material, right down to its core, is all surface level. Quaid, Megan Suri and Harvey Guillén’s human characters being more one-dimensional than Thatcher’s Iris was probably intentional, so as to make a point, but it also makes them less compelling villains.
Companion is another “woman in peril” film but now given a few software updates to make it both topical and a tad less formulaic. Thatcher and Lukas Gage shine the most here, and whatever mild enjoyment I had was largely due to their performances. The only times this film ever felt convincing was when those two were on screen.
Companion is now playing in theaters.
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