It’s a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a killer robot. Except Companion isn’t exactly the typical take on the classic sci-fi horror story. Instead, Drew Hancock’s cleverly constructed sci-fi horror movie is a fun takedown of the AI cautionary tale we know so well. And in the process, it may have given us the most sneakily feminist social horror movie this side of Gone Girl.
Iris (Sophie Thatcher) knows one thing: she loves Josh (Jack Quaid) with all of her heart. The sweetly affable young woman is so deeply in love with him that she’s willing to make the journey out to a remote lakeside villa for a weekend with Josh’s friends, whom she knows to hate her. But this relaxing weekend getaway isn’t what she thought it would be: after Sergey (Rupert Friend), the morally dubious owner of this private villa attempts to assault her, she kills him in self-defense — a shocking bit of violence that unveils a part of Iris’ true nature that she was never even aware of.
