Companion
Back in 2018, a filmmaker I know made a film about artificial intelligence sexbots called “2050.” You probably never heard of it, but writer Brian Ackley and director Princeton Holt made a fascinating drama about a man who was struggling to find connection in his human relationship, so he made an artificial companion, and it changed everything for him. I loved that film, and even recorded audio commentary for its DVD release. What Drew Hancock has done with his film, “Companion,” is not far removed from that film, but simply approached it from a different point-of-view. Our connection is with the companion bot, and truthfully, it should be, because humans suck.
When we first meet Iris (Sophie Thatcher), she is remembering her first encounter with Josh (Jack Quaid) in a grocery store, as she talks about how that was the happiest day of her life…next to the day she killed him. We see as they are going up to a lake house with friends. Iris is nervous, and things get gruesome when their host, Sergey (Rupert Friend), tries to take advantage of Iris. She kills him, which seems like a big mistake. Or maybe it was part of the plan, all along?
Hancock does a great job of examining the idea of toxic masculinity and incel culture through how he portrays Iris and Josh. Josh has no real remorse for what he thinks he’s going to do to Iris- for him, she’s just a thing, not a sentient being whom he has any responsibility towards. He’s not looking for anything more than a bot who fills a need for him. Hancock’s genius touch in this film is showing this through Iris’s point-of-view, and making the choice to let Iris in on her truth early in the film. That allows both characters to be on equal footing in terms of awareness of their truths, and the remainder of the film is Iris taking her existence into her own hands. Thatcher is wonderful at playing Iris throughout this arc, and the trials she goes through along the way, while Quaid is an easily hateable piece of trash. Hancock’s plotting goes a long way in holding our attention, even though we know where it will end up. How it gets there is where we derive our moviewatching pleasure in his film, and this satisfied me a great deal.
