Rating: 9/10
There’s a certain allure to Drew Hancock’s sci-fi horror film “Companion” that is unlike any recent big-screen release.
Whether it’s the stellar performances by the film’s cast or its engaging concept, “Companion” hooks the audience and keeps them on the edge of their seats.
Taking place in the near future, the film follows Iris (Sophie Thatcher), a companion android who goes haywire on a weekend getaway and uncovers the truth about herself and the schemes of her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) and his friends.
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“Companion” plays upon standard horror tropes like the “final girl,” the clever female character that lives at the end of the story. However, the film injects this narrative with a sci-fi twist that examines the real-life issues of artificial intelligence.
More than anything, the film offers commentary on the objectification of the female and male bodies to escape from reality while also exploring the role of AI in our daily lives and the dangers of using it to replace common interactions.
As shown in the official trailer, Iris is entirely controlled by Josh. Through an app, he manages everything about her: her hair and eye color, intelligence and almost every other physical and emotional part of her.
She is madly in love with him, all while remaining completely unaware of her robotic nature. Strangely enough, however, Josh is, too.
Despite his background knowledge of her, Josh is so infatuated by the memories he believes he has with Iris that he turns a blind eye to both his actions and Iris’ until he can’t distinguish between what is right and wrong.
Although it does not have any direct connection with “Companion,” this sense of adoration for a form of AI is similar to a real-life situation from October 2024, when 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III committed suicide after becoming infatuated with a role-playing AI chatbot.
Character.AI — the program used by Setzer — was made to feel as human-like as possible, which could arguably create an addiction.
This dependency on an artificial relationship plays out in “Companion” and underlines the ethical issues these programs pose to their users and the effects they leave behind.
An article by Michael Sweeney for The Daily Illini focuses on this topic, covering not only Setzer’s case but also scenarios directly from students who shared a familiar sense of addiction towards these programs.
“When the subject pretends to be a human — and, in some cases, your lover — it is tricky to remind yourself of their insentience,” Sweeney said. “Chats must remind users that ‘everything Characters say is made up,’ as Character.AI does.”
Pair this with the compelling performances from Thatcher and Quaid, who respectively give it their all as the naive, clingy boyfriend and the now-sentient artificial girlfriend, and you get a movie that is not only entertaining but also thought-provoking in its exploration of AI’s impact on personal lives.
“Companion” is a great film, but it is also an important and relatable narrative in multiple ways. If 2025 horror movies continue on this path, fans of the genre will be in for a wild ride.
