Intensity: 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Drew Hancock.
Companion is one big love triangle. Literally and figuratively. It deftly balances a series of human and non-human relationships, while at the same time trying to thread a very delicate needle between comedy, horror, and the sci-fi thriller genres.
If you’ve seen the trailer you already know that Companion is film noir-lite flick involving a series of sex-bots, or in a less tawdry way, AI companions.
Coming hot on the heels of 2022’s wild horror classic the Barbarian, 2025’s Companion comes from the same team. In fact, Companion was initially set to be directed by the Barbarian director, Zach Cregger, but the team opted for first time feature length director, Drew Hancock.
While Barbarian was a fairly complex multi-faceted story involving several distinct acts, Companion is essentially a film noir affair, with dribs and drabs of the aforementioned comedy, horror, and the sci-fi thriller genres. A teeny dribble of each, but not to much of any one of these ghoulish ingredients.
The film follows a young couple Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher ) as they set out for a romantic lakeside weekend with their friends. It’s clear from the jump that Iris is socially awkward, anxious, and downright peculiar. If you’ve seen the trailer you’ll understand that she’s a robot. If you haven’t seen the trailer, don’t fret, her identity is revealed in the first 15 minutes.
As they arrive Iris continues to strangely worry about her appearance and the ability to pick up on social queues. She’s also weirdly worried about Josh’s potential romantic overtures towards his human friend Kat (Megan Suri ).
Further exacerbating Iris’ concerns is Kat’s hyper-controlling and problematic Russian boyfriend, Sergey (Rupert Friend ) and a second couple Eli (Harvey Guillén ) and Patrick (Lukas Gage ). As the group sets in for an evening of drinking and dancing it’s clear that not everything is as it seems on the surface.
Companion lightly plays with the humor of owning a robot — or in this case — a sex-bot, but ultimately leaves a lot of low hanging gags on the table. In much the same way, the horror, sci-fi, and film noir elements are also explored, but none too deeply.
The final act of the film becomes an odd tale of morality that seems to be telling audiences that humans are fundamentally flawed and our gentle robot overlords will win in the end. Honestly, don’t fight it. You’ll get a sex-bot at some point in the future, but rest assured, it’ll be the one controlling you — not the other way around.
Should you see Companion?
On par, the film is pretty decent exploration of the hazards and pitfalls of emotionally driven technology. There are fun and innovative nods to a number of different genres, and the film will give you some futurism to noodle on with your partner on your way home. The problem, like many a love triangle, is that it’s a complicated affair. Sometimes you just have to make a decision, clearly articulate it, and do your best to abide by it.
The actors are all quite wonderful. It’s thrilling to see Harvey Guillén receive continued opportunities to flex his acting credentials. With the very real potential for Harvey Guillén to be forever be typecast as Guillermo from What We Do In The Shadows, it was a treat to see him slowly getting out from under that perfectly perfect vampiric production.
Unfortunately, Companion seems like a rather limp leg on the love triangle stool. By not firmly committing to comedy, film noir, horror, or sci-fi, audiences are left trying to figure out if they’re really in love with the film or not.
Here’s to hoping that the next film from this crew calibrates a little more exclusively to a single genre, as opposed to the partner swapping affair that Companion presents.
Companion is Rated R and currently in theaters.