‘Companion’
The less you know about Drew Hancock’s whip smart thriller-comedy, the harder its sinister detours will hit.
At first glance, Iris and Josh (Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid) are a model couple. But Iris isn’t just Josh’s girlfriend: She’s also his emotional support companion robot (and sex partner) who is programmed to feel anger, guilt, sadness, pain — “an imitation of a life,” as Josh tells her. Iris learns of her condition after Josh frames her in a murder scheme during a getaway weekend with a group of friends, sending Iris on a tortured journey to discover what it means to feel, and kill.
Hancock has fun borrowing from other horror-science fiction films about humans in emotionally complicated relationships with robots. This film is like “M3gan” with a heart; “Ex Machina” with a sense of humor; “Westworld” with female robots who have had it with bad men. I wish the film’s satire, mostly centered around a couple (Harvey Guillén and Lukas Gage) who get caught up in Josh’s scheme, had been sharper. Still, as a meditation on desire, codependency and survival in a world reckoning with artificial intelligence, the film is a demented joyride.
Rick (Vas Eli), a private investigator, wakes up on a subway one night in an uncanny city that looks a lot like New York. A former detective, Rick meets up with Frank (Isaach De Bankolé), a mysterious man who hires him to figure out whether or not a guy named Tony actually died in an explosion or if he committed insurance fraud. Tony’s sister, Dana (Susannah Perkins), knows what happened but keeps quiet.