Imagine, if you will, a skewed sci-fi reality that envisions a Black Mirror episode but for an entire movie? Can you even begin to grasp what that would look like? Maybe you can if in the last few years you’ve seen Foe or Fingernails or Don’t Worry Darling or Swan Song or Love Me or The Pod Generation or The Substance or Possessor or any one of the many attempts to recall the magic of at least some of the sci-fi anthology’s earlier episodes. It’s not as if the Charlie Brooker-created series was the first to spin “what if?” nightmares from the dangers of tech but its stickiness has had a noticeable effect on younger creators eager to Say Something about the times we live in.
Companion, a wink-wink pre-Valentine’s sci-fi comedy, is not just part of that trend but also belongs at the back of the long line of post-Get Out social thrillers, standing behind Fresh and Blink Twice, using an outlandish conceit to comment on something we’re all too aware of. The film, from the first-time writer-director Drew Hancock, is an attempt to skewer a certain, familiar type of shitty guy whose outward nice bro persona betrays a corroded and controlling core. He’s played by Jack Quaid, son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, who has cleverly turned his handsome and charming nepo baby privilege into something ultimately petulant and pathetic. It worked well as one of the Reddit-pilled killers in Scream 5 and works well here too, even if his character feels a little under-baked.
