“Companion” Movie Review: Sophie Thatcher Is a Bot Battling for Love in a Wild Cyber Thriller

Iris, played by Heretic and Yellowjackets star Sophie Thatcher, is a gorgeous yet enigmatic young woman who looks something like Zooey Deschanel in her New Girl years but without her happy, slightly thoughtless enthusiasm for life. (If anything, she’s closer to French New Wave actress Anna Karina.) Existence is a dull, gloomy slog, Iris tells us in voiceover, except for those rare moments when the clouds lift and you’re suddenly radiated by a sense of purpose.

Just such a miracle occurs when Iris meets Josh (Jack Quaid, who suggests a more puppyish Joshua Jackson). Iris falls instantly in love — a love that never wavers for an instant. Unfortunately, a love that never wavers may not respond well when it isn’t reciprocated. It might just go ahead and collapse into hell.

Companion, in its understated opening minutes, is preoccupied with Iris’s anxiousness as Josh drives her far out into the countryside to spend a weekend with his friend Kat (Megan Suri), Kat’s rich Russian boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend, having a good time ladling on the accent) and an easygoing gay couple (Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage).

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Iris’ instincts are right on the nose: Everyone treats her with a pleasant but unnerving condescension. She isn’t taken seriously. At all. She might as well be Julia Roberts dismissed by the snotty saleswomen in Pretty Woman.

Iris' problem, it turns out, is that she's an android — even worse, a rental android — programmed to be Josh’s unquestioningly devoted sexual and romantic partner. In fact, Josh doesn’t take her any more seriously than the other guests, regarding her as the female version of an emotional security dog. You learn, for example, that he’s adjusted her intelligence settings downward to a low, easily commandable level. If he threw a stick and asked her to fetch it, she probably would.

But you're about to witness the flip side of Iris' slavish obedience: Her love, when put to the test, triggers a passionate response so startling and violent that the weekend winds up a complete bloodbath.

Companion is a clever, suspenseful and absurdly funny film that isn’t terribly interested in Iris’ cyber details (in a flashback she’s delivered to Josh’s apartment in a plain coffin-shaped container). It’s really a cynical little essay about the nature of love and, specifically, about how Iris — something like the erotic-dancer heroine of Anora — comes to realize that relationships and men aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. That love does not compute.

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Companion never stops springing surprises on you, but the greatest thrill is watching Thatcher’s carefully evolving performance as she charts Iris’ dawning, violent disillusionment, as well as Iris' thirst for her own independence as a self-validating android. Hell, it turns out, hath no fury like an android scorned.

Companion could be M3GAN, 2022’s nutty android-horror hit, reconceived as a tragic romance.

Companion is in theaters now.

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