companion movie review — Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher in *Companion*. Photo: Warner Bros

AI Dating

In the world of Companion, advanced robots are widely used as romantic partners. These “companion” androids are virtually indistinguishable from real people. In fact, they are programmed to believe that they are human.

The companions are loving and supportive, incapable of lying, and fantastic in the bedroom. Why would someone want to risk the messiness and uncertainty of a human relationship when this is an alternative? We already have apps for AI girlfriends and boyfriends. These androids are a plausible next step.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is head over heels for her boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid). The couple takes a weekend trip to visit their friends at a secluded lake house. One morning, Iris is assaulted when she’s outside by herself. She kills the man in self defense and then rushes back to the house to tell Josh.

Iris passes out and wakes up tied to a chair. Josh has bad news for her: she’s a robot, and many of her memories never happened. Worse, she’s dysfunctional and needs to be shut down for good.

Iris is aghast. How could she be a machine? She has real emotions and experiences. That’s just programming, he tells her.

Companion plays up the robot revelation like it’s a big twist. This would have worked, except that the studio gave away this plot development in both the trailer and the poster.

Companion Raises Plenty of Interesting Questions

Are Iris’s emotions genuine? If so, how would she, or anyone else, prove this? What constitutes a “real” emotion, anyway? If the companions are sentient, do they deserve the same rights as human beings? Is it unethical to treat them poorly? Or is Iris little more than a glorified sex toy?

Companion is far from the first movie to bring up questions like these, but it’s more innovative than most. Iris is a fully realized creation. She can think strategically, speaks dozens of languages, and has an Alexa-like ability to instantly summon information.

She’s played brilliantly by Sophie Thatcher, who adds just the right amount of subtle oddness to her performance. Even if you don’t know she’s a robot at the beginning, you can tell something is a little bit off about her. Iris is a fun character who’s easy to root for.

Jack Quaid portrays Josh as a foolish sociopath hiding behind the facade of a dopey nice guy. Josh has no true emotional connections with anyone, robot or human. This emphasizes one of the movie’s main themes – the lack of human connection in our social media-obsessed world.

Companion is directed and written by Drew Hancock in his feature film debut. The cinematography is bright and colorful. This belies the dark subject matter, but the film is also very funny.

Hancock comes from a comedy background. He injects plenty of humor into his script. Hancock isn’t interested in espousing a particular point of view. Companion is content to raise questions and let viewers decide the answers for themselves.

Rating