This film is essentially an elongated Black Mirror episode - not that there's anything wrong with that - except a bit perkier than the usual, which tend (at least the ones I've seen) to want to be a bit gloomy and portentous, whereas this is, despite a fairly high body count, mostly fun, even if it does have some pointed things to say about technology revealing the worst in humans. It's also probably got a lower budget than some Black Mirror episodes, which is not to say that it looks cheap, more that it's a clever conceit that needs minimal SFX to convey. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you stop reading and see it now. If you've seen the trailer - or even the poster above - a fairly early twist has been spoilt (incidentally, that's a key difference between English English and American English - no American would write "whilst" or "learnt" or "spoilt" - only -e or -ed endings for them, and consequently my American spell-checker has that underlined in red). But, unless you were completely unaware that there were any sci-fi elements to the film (a state of ignorance that would be undermined by the early minutes of the film, where the main couple are in a self-driving car), you would probably guess that the title "companion" means that the main female character is a robot (or sexbot, or fuckbot, as the hateable male characters tend to refer to them - although, in the interests of balance, there is also [another spoiler] a male sexbot in the film as well).
Anyway, the early parts of the film certainly tease the fact that she's a robot, even as we see her (Iris) and him (Josh (of course - "Josh" is the perfect dickweed name)) meet cute in a grocery store
and then drive out deep into the country to stay for a weekend with a female friend of Josh's (Kat, whom Iris knows hates her), her rich Russian boyfriend who owns the place, and a gay couple who are also friends of Josh and Kat's) - Josh calls Iris "Beep-boop", Iris appears to know the temperature and humidity without looking it up, and a few others. We also see something significant without realizing it - after Josh and Iris have sex that night (let's just say Josh finishes fast), Iris wants to stay awake talking, whereas Josh rolls over and says "Go to sleep Iris". The scene cuts to black before we see what is later the reveal that Iris is a robot: when he says that key phrase, she goes into standby and her eyes do the thing they're doing in the poster. This happens after the first fatality of the film. In the morning Iris wants to go down to the lakeside that the palatial "cabin" abuts to catch some rays, while Josh says he wants to get over his hangover first. As she leaves the house we see him pick up what looks like a thumbdrive/USB stick (that we saw came packed in the luggage) and insert it into his phone, and then tap away on the phone. Meanwhile, by the lake, Iris discovers a nasty-looking switchblade in her pocket, and she is joined at the lake by Sergey, who gets progressively pervy towards her.
(He knows she's a sexbot even if she doesn't.) Cut to the rest up at the house and they see Iris come in drenched in blood.
She's freaking out so much that Josh has to do the "Go to sleep, Iris" thing. They tie her up and plan to call the cops, but Josh screws up because he wants to say goodbye,
and at the same time reveals to her that she's a robot. Naturally he leaves her tied to the chair to go argue with Kat and she gets loose. It's then that we (and the gay couple - the chubby, older Eli (What We Do In The Shadows' Harvey Guillen)
and the younger, much better-looking, but apparently besotted Patrick) learn that this has all been planned by Kat and Josh because Sergey has a safe full of money (with a combination of Stalin's birthday) and besides, he's a bad dude. (Later we learn that Josh thinks he's Russian mob, but he's just a businessman (albeit with a wife and kid) and Kat let Josh think that so he'd plan the murder. But don't worry, Kat gets hers.) So the four of them (one of whom is also a robot) set out into the woods to track Iris down. But there's a catch: she's also taken Josh's phone (otherwise he could remotely shut her down) and has bumped up her intelligence setting from 40% (when she sees that it's set that low she sighs and says "Oh Josh" - as in, "you would want your girlfriend dumb, you loser") up to 100%. And thus the plan begins to unravel disastrously.
Without wanting to give too much away, I do have some notes. Good first: in general the dialog is really good. Eli especially has some funny lines (one in particular, where he calls himself an "ally" to the robot community had me snorting). The actress who plays Iris (Sophie Thatcher) does a wonderful job anchoring the film. She doesn't get to be funny or snarky, which is why you probably remember the other actors more, but she is eminently believable in an unbelievable role, which is no mean feat. Also I commend her for not having her snaggle teeth fixed (despite playing a robot!) and she's not even British! Jack Quaid, who first came to notice in The Boys but nowadays seems to be in everything, is certainly willing to be an unlikeable git in this, and get humiliated in various ways. That's in part why his sudden turn to being sinister, brave and competent at the very end of the movie is an unbelievable twist, although it does set up a nice reversal of a key phrase already mentioned. This also happens after Iris has been completely rebooted and made autonomous, so the idea that he should still have some grip on her (all sexbots imprint on the first person to appear to them when they initially boot up
[they can be rebooted if you hold a spot behind their ear for a count of five] so that they are nauseatingly infatuated with said person) seems implausible, especially after all she knows about him.
There are also some odd inconsistencies: at one point Iris is made to shoot herself in the head in an attempt to dispose of a problem before the cops come, but then the bot-owners who come to pick up this supposed rogue bot (one of whom immediately clocks that she's been "modded") reveal that (a) she's full of complete recordings of everything that's happened, and (b) that's not where her brains are, so she's just essentially in shock, but later we see her with no evidence of a large hole in each temple. Furthermore, the other sexbot commits the equivalent of hara-kiri, they do so by shoving a cattle prod in their mouth, when presumably they should shove it in their chest, where all the central processing goes on. But once you think about the sexbots not knowing (well, I should qualify that, but watch the film) that they're robots despite never having bodily functions... Or, given that we see them "eating" do they also shit? Is the shit just chewed up food or do their innards convert it into convincing turds? How much does the company care about not letting them know they're not human?
The ending is also very reminiscent of (the superior but not as funny) Ex Machina. But all those quibbles aside, it is definitely a fun ride with some laugh out loud moments as well as some Terminator-esque moments of dread. You can definitely see the same DNA as Barbarian, which shared some people behind the scenes. Joe Bob says check it out!
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