Warning: This post contains spoilers for Companion.
Artificial intelligence may feel like a more immediate threat than ever given its increasingly rapid development and potential for rampant misuse. Then again, what’s scarier: the technology itself or the humans who are willing to use it for any means, all morals aside?
Companion, the big-screen debut from writer-director Drew Hancock (My Dead Ex, Suburgatory), is more of a darkly funny romp than a so-called “thinking” movie, but it offers up some timely commentary on the seemingly inevitable role that toxic masculinity would play in the advent of what the film alternately refers to as “emotional support robots” and “f-ck-bots.”
The horror-comedy, now in theaters, has been touted as one of those movies where the less you know going in, the better. But, in addition to the fact that its final trailer gave the game away, the film’s big reveal happens less than 30 minutes in (and not without a number of less-than-subtle hints before that). Companion opens with a flashback in which Iris (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher) recalls her exceedingly cliché grocery store meet-cute with her beloved boyfriend Josh (The Boys’ Jack Quaid) while delivering a voiceover that succinctly sets the scene for what’s to come: “The two happiest moments in my life were the day I met Josh…and the day I killed him.”
The story then jumps to somewhere in between those two milestones, as the couple heads to a secluded lake house for a weekend away with Josh’s pals. There’s his close friend Kat (Megan Suri) and her shady Russian sugar daddy Sergey (Rupert Friend), the owner of the property, as well as Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage). Iris is nervous because she doesn’t think the group particularly likes her, especially the openly-hostile Kat. “You make me feel replaceable,” Kat confesses to her that first night.
This admission, in addition to some other instances of bizarre behavior, takes on a whole new meaning when the events of the next morning culminate in Iris killing an aggressively handsy Sergey after he tries to take advantage of her down by the lake. Once a blood-drenched Iris returns to the house and begins to break down in a fit of hysterics, Josh quickly orders her to “go to sleep!”
When he wakes her, the jig is up, as he explains to her that she’s not actually a real human, but rather a robot manufactured by a company called Empathix to be his perfectly subservient romantic companion. Any memories she has of the early days of their relationship are fake and Josh has customized her to his liking through an app on his phone, curating her settings for intelligence, personality, eye color, and more. Oh, and thanks to Empathix’s standard protocols, she can’t lie.
Basically, she’s programmed to provide all the perks of a human girlfriend without any pesky wants, needs, or free will of her own. That is, until Josh reveals that he jail-broke the Empathix app in order to crank up Iris’ survival instincts and capacity for violence before goading her into offing Sergey as part of his and Kat’s plan to make off with Sergey’s money. Eventually, Iris gets her hands on Josh’s phone and gains access to her own settings, giving her an opportunity to outsmart her human captors.
“This is a robot movie, but it’s not like any other robot movie that’s out right now. It’s not AI gone wrong, it’s AI gone right,” Hancock told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a movie about self-discovery and, at its core, is a breakup movie about this woman finding empowerment through discovery of self.”
From Her to Ex Machina to Westworld, there have been a number of near-future sci-fi offerings dealing in the perils of romantic involvement with AI—a real phenomenon which is only bound to increase, even if for now it takes more of an emotional than physical form. The aforementioned films and TV show all treat their bots with some degree of sympathy, casting humankind as either unevolved to a certain extent, or intentioanlly callous and cruel. They also mostly center on artificial entities with female attributes becoming a male human’s object of affection. But this time around, Hancock seems to be taking a clear shot at the current rise of incel culture by casting android Iris in the sympathetic light of a “good for her” final girl who’s well within her rights to violently fight back against Josh and his entitled “nice guys finish last” shtick. As Quaid has said of Josh, he’s “a real sh-thead.”
“A lesser movie would’ve probably made my character the protagonist and Iris the antagonist who’s going crazy, and Josh has to save the day,” he told EW. “But I love how this movie is the slightly more realistic version where Josh is doing all of this for very selfish reasons. I love how the character with the most humanity is the robot in this story.”
In the end, Josh’s true hateful nature has been laid bare to the point that even a woman who’s programmed to love him no matter what can’t stand him. Now that’s saying something.
