Companion landed in theaters at the end of January, just in time for Valentine’s day. As a sci-fi horror and romantic comedy movie (Google’s words, not mine), its marketing slogan reads “the best date night movie, or the worst.” Well, I saw it on a date night and on a scale from worst to best it sat somewhere in the middle.
This film drew me in with its strong cast. Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid lead as the film’s main couple, Iris and Josh. Names like Harvey Guillen, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, and Rupert Friend also feature in the main cast, who play a group of friends staying at a vacation house for a long weekend. I think that these actors added a lot to this story, and in my opinion the script played to many of the actors’ strengths that we’ve seen in their other projects.
That being said, I found the writing weak. The first half lacked most of the energy that arose in the second half. Now you might think to yourself, “That’s just how stories work, do you not remember learning about plot stages in school?” For the record, yes, I am aware that I essentially described the basic structure of telling a proper story. What I mean is that the writers spend little time trying to get you attached to any aspect of the movie. The forced dialogue in the first scene of the movie with Quaid and Thatcher reminded me that they were anything but the characters they played. I am happy to say that this occurred rarely in the film, but for an opening sequence it did not set the best tone.
The movie opens with a monologue from Thatcher that leads to the line, “There have been two moments in my life when I was happiest. The first was the day I met Josh. And the second, the day I killed him.” When I first heard that in the theater, I felt optimistic. Sometimes, spoiling certain plot points of the movie can be a fun way to misdirect your audience from other twists and turns that appear later on. But then I remembered that the same opening line also appears in its trailers, as well as the spoiling of Iris’ true origins as an artificially intelligent “companion” bot. The audience goes into the movie already knowing two of the major aspects that would otherwise be considered twists in other horror films. Because of this, I assumed that some really crazy things would have to happen in this movie to keep the audience entertained.
And I mean, they tried to have that.
I fear I need to place a spoiler warning for the rest of the review, so if you plan on seeing this movie I would recommend stopping here (but coming back later is greatly encouraged).
The first kill of the movie is when Iris kills Friend’s character Sergi, who was trying to sexually take advantage of her on the beach that is below his house (the house that Sergi owns and is also conveniently in the middle of the woods miles away from town). This kill was admittedly very anticlimactic, and it doesn’t get better when Iris reveals what she has done to the group back inside. This sequence leads up to the reveal of her artificial origins, but as the majority of the scene was already featured in the trailer, any surprise was off the table. Then, we find out that Josh and Suri’s character Kat had set Iris up to kill Sergi for his money. Sergi is portrayed as a sketchy rich guy, with an emphasis on his adoration for Stalin and ominous russian music that plays when we see his belongings. However, Josh discovers out that Sergi made his money from completely legal means and Kat had lied to him to keep him loyal to their plan. The progression of this scene was initially hard to follow, and then the writers gave the audience little time to digest it before jumping in to the next and by far best surprise of their friend Patrick being a companion bot as well. Patrick’s scenes counted among my favorites, as his memories consisted of a fun Halloween dance number that I genuinely was smiling at when they showed it in the theater.
Something interesting the writers did for this movie was that they actually took advantage of Iris being inhuman. There was one particular scene where Iris messed around with her controls to mimic a masculine voice for her safety, and I think that was a really clever aspect to add. I also found it very entertaining that Josh is shown to be more of one of those stereotypical “nice guys” as the plot unravels along with him, and his comments towards the women in his life as well as his continuing underestimation of Iris added an intriguing layer to the rest of the film. You can tell that he felt confident in the start with his hold over Iris, but then the rest of the deaths in the movie (including his own) are undoubtedly caused by Josh’s obsession with keeping that control. He even goes about demeaning her without her knowing throughout their relationship by calling her “BeeBoop” to her face, as she thinks it is just a pet name whereas he knows it’s because she’s essentially a robot. When I realized that I laughed out loud because oh my god he’s calling her beeboop that’s crazy, but when you stop to think about it you know it’s not truly anything cute.
This movie serves as a fun comment on relationship health, self love, respect, and our society’s growing relationship with technology. In the end I have to say that I liked it more than some of the other movies I have watched recently, but it was sadly not anything special. It felt like there could have been some fine tuning before release, and the first half included scenes that just didn’t flow together as well as they should have. Also, if they refrained from spoiling the movie in the trailers I think it could have had more of an impact, but that’s just unfortunately becoming a common theme I see with modern trailers. The writers had great ideas and a stellar cast to bring them to life as best as they could, so go support your local theater and see what you think-but maybe consider a different movie for date night.
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