Companion

A weekend getaway at a remote lake house with friends takes a very violent turn when one of the guests turns out to be a robot sex doll, who then "malfunctions."

Apparently set in a creepy asshole Tesla/Apple Store near-future, as evidenced by the characters’ use of auto-drive in ugly all-digital touchscreen cars, it's clear from the start that there’s something off about Josh and Iris's relationship. Also, from the way everyone else talks, both to her and about her, it's clear that everyone is well aware of what Iris is… everyone, that is, except for Iris.

Iris, meanwhile, is a young woman who recalls every detail about her meet-cute first meeting with her boyfriend Josh at the grocery store. It was perfect. And for her, ever since then, their relationship has been nothing but the same...

Perfect.

So for Iris, when the pair travels to an isolated lakehouse for a weekend hang-out with Josh's closest friends, which include the lovely Kat, the long-time couple Eli and Patrick, and Sergey, who is the lovely Kat's current beau–who is sketchy, rich, Russian, and is also the one who owns the incredible lake house they're staying in–she's excited. She loves Josh. She loves being with him. She's simple that way. And despite the fact that Josh's friends are a little cold to her, for Iris, their first night there is just like every other night in her and Josh's relationship...

Perfect.

But the next day, Sergey attempts to sexually assault Iris while the pair are alone down at the lake, and Iris ends up killing him in self-defense. Blood-soaked and panicked, she returns to the house, and attempts to explain what happened. Josh simply says, "Iris, go to sleep", and she shuts down.

Perfect.

Y'see, Iris is actually a highly advanced robot sex doll. She's basically a cross between Seri, a terminator, and, well... a sex doll.

When Iris next awakens, she is tied to a chair. Josh is there, and he informs her that she is a companion robot he's renting from a robotics company Empathix, and that her emotions and her intelligence, everything about her, can be controlled by an app on Josh's phone. This is shocking for Iris to hear, as she had no idea that she was a robot. Once all of this is properly explained, Josh then gets distracted by the lovely Kat, and Iris breaks free. She then steals Josh's phone, which he left in easy grabbing range, and flees into the woods. There, Iris boosts her intelligence and strength from an easily frightened and confused but willing little sex waif to MOTHER FUCKING TERMINATOR, YO!

...And I'll be honest with you all, it really seems like a design flaw that this option is even included in an off-the-shelf fuck-toy.

But y'see, Josh is stupid and totally in love with the lovely Kat. Unfortunately for Josh, the lovely Kat is not. What she is, is stupid and super greedy, and so it turns out, this was all a plan from the beginning to kill and rob Sergey of all the cash he has in the safe, and then blame it on the robot malfunctioning. Eli and Patrick are just there as unwitting alibis, and at first, they're not happy about it, but for a cut, fine, fuck it, they're in.

Unfortunately, now that Iris is loose and has Josh's phone, their whole plan is in trouble, because they can't have Empathix discovering that they jailbroke the sex-robot they rented from them, and then programmed it to be able to kill Sergey, or they will end up in jail for murder. And being that Sergey is so sketchy, it's fair to assume that once they're there, they will likely be killed by Russian gangsters too. So now, a desperate bunch of dipshits is forced to play hide and seek with Iris the Robo-Terminator, all so they can shut her down, get Josh's phone back, and erase all record of their meddling with her programming.

This is the gist of the movie.

So now they're all panicking and chasing a walking Fleshlight through the woods, and Iris just keeps killing people! Friends, strangers, randos, just... everybody, and every attempt to fix things and cover things up only makes things worse.

This plan has well and truly gone off the rails, people.

In the end, it's a real "who do you really want to root for" kind of thing. Do I want Iris to kill all of these assholes and go free? Sure. But, also, I really wouldn't mind if they killed Iris and got away with the Russian douchebag’s money either. I mean, Kat really is lovely, but also, while the film does have a really good "down with the patriarchy" message to it, at the same time, somewhat unavoidably due to its set-up, it also has a very pro-AI slant to it too.

And that shit is simply too hard to get behind these days.

In a world where a bunch of billionaire assholes push automation and self-checkouts in order to kill all minimum wage jobs in the name of their own bottom lines, all while refusing to even talk about the idea of Basic Universal Income, not to mention Universal Healthcare, and then they turn around and shove dumbshit GenAI on us at every possible opportunity, despite it being nothing but an idiot plagiarism machine that destroys the environment, and all so it can automate the Dunning-Kruger Effect for lazy morons, produce writings in the style of a boring and untalented hack, and also to make aggressively ugly "art" for pervs and incels, and for no other reason than a bunch of dull and bloated rich men, who can buy everything except artistic talent, are jealous of artists, and all with the unavoidable end result of polluting the world while making everything shittier? I mean... fuck Iris, man. There ain’t nobody here interested in cheering on the seeds of the robot revolution, my dudes.

Companion reminded me a lot of M3gan in the way that it was limited by itself, and how those limitations kept it from being "great" instead of just "fine."

There were plenty of oppotunities for this film to be funnier, wilder, gorier, but it rarely takes them. In M3gan's case, this was mostly due to its inexplicable PG-13 rating. Here, the film just feels weirdly restrained pretty much the whole time. I mean, yeah, there's plenty of blood, and one or two good twists, but mostly it feels like it doesn't really know what to do for the half an hour or so after its set-up and before it can get to its ending, so it just has everyone run around in circles for a bit, and draw scenes out. And unfortunately, unlike M3gan, Companion does not have that same sense of fun to make up for these failings.

Plus, obviously the posters and the trailers make no attempt to hide the fact that Iris is a robot, but still... the movie seems to think it's a surprise for the audience. That just felt weird while watching.

In a nutshell, the problem with Companion is that it's pretty much as expected, the whole way through, and isn't very daring or shocking as it goes about it.

Despite this, there are a few good moments. The voice adjustment to turn on the voice-activated car was fun. The automatic corkscrew was maybe one of the most telegraphed kills ever, but it was also wild and ridiculous and fun, which was great, even if it only highlights that it was also something that was in too short a supply otherwise in this film.

The film also makes a lot of hay out of how incredibly shitty the incredibly shitty incel dipshits and their shitty incel beliefs are, so that was cool. Josh is revealed as a huge misogynistic loser, and it's always good to have this portrayed honestly on screen. He's a very typical “nice guy,” which means he believes that the world owes him something simply because he was born a white straight cis-gendered male. And this is despite the fact that he's mediocre nobody living the life of a giant man-baby in a dumpy apartment with blank walls and mismatched furniture, while he still clings to his professional sports fandom, and wears big ugly off-white gym socks that hang off his feet, while living amongst mountains of fast food container trash. Who else would rent a sad pathetic little fuck doll that doesn’t challenge his authority, one where, if she talks too much, he can just put her to sleep, right? In short, Josh is the natural enemy of all things that are nice and good, and the film doesn't pretend otherwise. I liked that.

But it's not enough.

The plot is simply way too convenient way too often. The way Iris is able to escape? The fact that the simple slide bar app is capable of turning her into a robot super-genius/super-soldier? It's just... too easy. I get that this is the point of the film, but what would have made it good, would've been if the film hadn't just handwaved all that shit in order for it to get there. But, nope... because this is the kind of film that paints itself a magic door whenever it gets stuck, or uses some made-up technology to explain the convenience away. Once or twice in a story, this isn't a bad thing, but when it's the go-to option? (Fart noise) And when it's not doing that, it's relying on the most shockingly stupid characters being shockingly stupid, so that things can happen the way the film needs them to. I mean, how many god damn red flags did that cop need? Was he blind? Did he not see that Iris was literally soaked in blood?

So dumb and aggrivating, and it doesn't have to be this way, y'know.

Companion is a sci-fi twist on the classic rape revenge thriller, meets a kind of murder mystery, all while being a commentary on misogyny in a technologically-advanced world. Unfortunately, it's not funny enough to be a comedy, it's not gory enough to be a horror, and it's not serious enough to be as dramatic as it suddenly decides that it’s supposed to be at the end. That it relies on, but doesn't even seem to consider, the questions of misogyny and non-consent in technology that it was built on just makes it seem like a half-effort. It's hard for me to really quantify, but even worse, the film seems like it's blissfully unaware of this too, like it just never occured to them to engage more with their own ideas, like the filmmakers didn't get any feedback, or do multiple drafts, or maybe they just aren't capable of being better... I don't know. But this film lacks daring. It lacks style. It's not impressive or surprising. It's a consistently basic middle-of-the-road movie that hits all the notes that it seems to know that it's supposed to hit in exactly the way that it's supposed to hit them.

It's not bad. It's just... expected.

Apparently, the one writer was the director too–although, there could have been more writers who were uncredited, possibly because they didn't want their name attached to the project, I don't know–but the attempts to be a comedy, a horror, a sci-fi film, and a drama with something to say, makes it feel like it was the result of clashing versions of the same script that were finally welded together into one. Did it go through multiple rewrites from multiple writers, or did the one writer rewrite it so many times they lost the plot? Whatever it was, that lack of really knowing its identity is evident on screen.

In the end, this film neither goes hard enough, nor is it funny enough, nor is it even all that particularly thoughtful, and worst of all, it doesn't seem like it's even interested in trying to be. Companion feels like all concept, and no extrapolation. And that can only ever mean one thing...

Companion is fine. It's meh. It's a shrug. It would be a nice matinee, maybe, while you're folding clothes or something, but otherwise, I wouldn't bother.