It Takes Two: Companion Offers A Twisted Take On the Traditional Love Story

It Takes Two: Companion Offers A Twisted Take On the Traditional Love Story

- By Creative Team

Companion manages to showcase some delightful violence, is incredibly funny, and even delivers some very touching character relationships throughout.

By: Dustin Meadows



Drew Hancock’s
Companion is, at its heart, a love story. An ugly love story, but a love story nonetheless. Whether you’ve seen more than just the first trailer that reveals the film’s driving “twist,” if it can be called that, because it’s delivered within about the first 20 minutes of the film, going in as blind as possible will likely yield a more rewarding viewing experience. At least it did for me. And even if you go in knowing what this one’s about, it’s still a really solid film. From this point on, I am going to talk about the specific details of the film, so if you haven’t seen it yet, take this time to go watch it, then circle back to this review.

 

Companion, on its surface, is about a young couple, Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher). Quaid and Thatcher have both been making their mark in the world of horror these past few years, the former in danger of being typecast as a seemingly too good boyfriend who turns out to be a terrible incel, and the latter who’s just consistently delivering as an incredibly strong female lead with this film, The Boogeyman (2023, Rob Savage) and Heretic (2024, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods) all under her belt in just a few years. The twist that comes early on is that Iris is actually a romantic companion robot Josh has rented for himself, and she is fully customized by him and implanted with false memories to create their relationship, or “establish a love link” as its referred to in the film.

On a weekend cabin retreat with Josh’s friends, couple Eli and Patrick (Harvey Guillen and Lukas Gage), Kat (Megan Suri) and her boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend), Iris accidentally kills Sergey in self-defense when he attempts to force himself on her. From there, the human friends attempt to cover their tracks and frame Iris for the murder, only for Iris to escape and put them all at risk of taking the fall for Sergey’s death. What follows is a game of cat and mouse that has a lot of fun with the rules and intricacies that are introduced throughout for the companion robots.

There are shades of Ex Machina (2014, Alex Garland), The Terminator, and just about any woman-led revenge thriller you’ve ever seen on display here, but Companion also manages to showcase some delightful violence, is incredibly funny, and even delivers some very touching character relationships throughout. Quaid and Thatcher are phenomenal as the film’s central characters, and they both may just be in the best form of their careers here. Go out and see Companion now, but maybe don’t see it on a first date

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