Companion has all the ingredients for an enjoyable slasher film. It has a marvelous cast, is brought to us by the producers of Barbarian – a film that a lot of people liked even if this critic wasn’t one of them – and a playful setup that lends itself to timely themes. All of this should give us a pretty decent source of entertainment. Sadly the final product, while having the occasional burst of excitement, is a rather flat, even familiar, affair.
We open on Iris (Sophie Thatcher), a young woman who has the definition of a meet-cute in a grocery shop. A strapping young man, Josh (Jack Quaid), spots her and accidentally spills an aisle’s worth of oranges trying to say hello. Despite this humorous mishap, the two go on to enter a relationship. Some time passes and Josh is taking Iris for a getaway to a cabin in the woods with his friends. Anyone who’s seen a horror film knows that this location is a glutton for unsettling developments.
It is here, after a horrifying encounter with the cabin’s owner Sergey (Rupert Friend) where Iris uncovers the terrifying truth – she is not a real person. She is a robot who Josh purchased online to be his girlfriend and, for the purposes of this trip, serve as a key component to a complex plan Josh has concocted with his friend Kat (Megan Suri). With Iris’s discovery of this throwing a spanner in the works, the film becomes an increasingly absurd conflict between Iris, who wants to escape, and Josh, who wants to shut her down for knowing too much.
Some may judge this reveal of Iris as a robot as a spoiler, which is not unfair given that most UK trailers have only alluded to this rather than outright confirmed it. However, this reveal is shown in the most recent trailer, and is uncovered early into the film. Furthermore, it’s hard to dig into the film or its components without mentioning this twist, namely because the setup does lend itself to some fun ideas.
Companion is primarily a dissection of toxic, overly controlling relationships. In an early scene, Iris and Josh have sex, only for Josh to go to sleep almost immediately after finishing. If this isn’t an indicator of how Josh truly views his supposed partner, then the reveal that Iris is essentially just a sentient sex toy to him surely does. It is through realising how Josh truly sees her that Iris starts at last to think for herself. In a way she is reclaiming agency and autonomy, or, given the character’s robotic origins, establishing some for herself for the first time. Many will be making comparisons to Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, and not without justification.
The film, despite its horror genre branding, adapts a comedic tone to its storytelling, and it is here where the film is at its strongest. Plenty of creative scenarios emerge from its premise, particularly once Iris – in a moment of blatant product placement – gets her hands on Josh’s Sony flip iPhone, which he uses to control her. That the story is set in the near future – given away through the use of self-driving cars – lends a bit more flexibility to the setting and possible comedic situations. This includes an encounter Iris has with a police officer in which a mistake in her settings threatens to deny her the help she needs. There is no shortage of imaginative scenarios here, with Josh Ethier and Brett W. Bachman’s whiplash editing providing sharp but kinetic tonal contrasts to emphasise the simultaneous seriousness and silliness of what’s occurring on screen.
Unfortunately, these otherwise amusing scenarios are few and far between. The meat of the narrative is taken up by Josh’s scheming, which quickly goes south when Iris becomes aware of her cybernetic self. His plan – basically a get rich quick scheme – swiftly gets more complicated as the story progresses, its continual presence dampening the comedic elements of the film, which otherwise could’ve been far more bombastic then they actually are. Companion stops short of embracing its own creative chaos, resulting in a watered down slasher comedy that gradually grows blander as the balance between comedy and horror never quite pans out. This is even when you ignore the film’s inconsistencies – Iris comes away from the first death of the story looking like Carrie White, only for her to get seemingly less covered in dirt and blood as the film proceeds.
Even its themes on patriarchy and the way women can be taken for granted in relationships have been explored and analysed in pictures such as Don’t Worry Darling, itself not the most refined of thematic explorations. Much of the analysis seen here comes in the form of characters speaking their flaws out loud, with one of Josh’s speeches at a dinner table essentially lamenting on how hard it is to be a straight white guy. If this moment had been hammed up more, to show off just how pathetic Josh is, then the satire might’ve hit much harder. Instead though, these compelling themes feel all too familiar, the delivery too often relying on telling over showing.
It’s a shame that Companion ended up feeling so flat as there’s no shortage of admirable qualities. Sophie Thatcher, who was brilliant in Heretic, gives a fun, complex performance as, in a sense, a woman coming to terms with her own independence. Quaid is as charismatic as ever, understanding the mental gymnastics of an unaware, entitled scumbag so well that you almost like the character. Sadly though, their efforts aren’t enough to shake the feeling of insipidness that radiates from the picture, even as you find yourself chuckling along at portions of it. That the official trailer featured quotes not from critics or journalists but from seemingly random Twitter users and influencers who saw the film early, really doesn’t do it any favours. Perhaps that was a taste of things to come in hindsight.
Companion is in cinemas from January 24th
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Director: Drew Hancock
Writer: Drew Hancock
Stars: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lucas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillen, Rupert Friend
Runtime: 97 minutes
Country: USA
