Companion Gives Toxic Masculinity a Delicious Digital Twist
You’ve dreamed of the perfect partner landing on your doorstep. Now… just pop open the box and power her up.
good.film
a month ago
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We’ve got a confession to make: we weren’t quite convinced about covering Companion as an impact film this week. It comes across like a glossy thriller-horror, bloody and bright, that seemed juuuust a little too popcorn. Besides, haven’t we seen enough ‘tech turns against the humans’ stories by now? What new ideas could Companion possibly add to the conversation?
Turns out, Companion is tight and clever, tearing open toxic traits and male fantasies in a way that couldn’t be more topical right now. If you lick your lips at dark satire like Blink Twice, this is the movie for you. It’s scoring 9/10 reviews from audiences AND critics, who’ve praised its vibes of “sexual politics in a popcorn box.” And its killer screenplay flips romcom expectations on their head: the first voiceover we hear from Iris (Sophie Thatcher) tells us the two days that made me the happiest in my life were the day I met Josh… and the day I killed him.
So is Companion a twisted relationship story, an AI cautionary tale or a toxic masculinity takedown? As it turns out, it’s a potent blend of all three – but to dig into it properly, we’ve got to give away one of the film’s early reveals. It’s not a Sixth Sense style revelation (you might’ve picked up the ‘twist’ in some of the film’s marketing already) but spoiler alert – if you want to go into Companion knowing as LITTLE as possible, then stop right here!
I’m too curious! What’s the setup to Companion?
We’re with Iris and Josh (Jack Quaid) on their drive to a friend’s luxe lake house, and they seem like a super cute new couple. It’s similar to the first scenes of Get Out, and like that film, the sweet appearances lie atop a huge undercurrent of something is off here. Writer-director Drew Hancock lets us chalk it up to jitters – Iris, the new girlfriend, just wants to make a great impression on her man’s friends. She’s anxious to fit in, to be the perfect partner. The 50s-style headband is no accident.
The friends are fun, especially the jokey Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his chiselled but simple hubby, Patrick (Lukas Gage), but there’s an instant tension between Iris and the blunt, judgmental Kat (Megan Suri) that we can’t quite put our finger on. Is she jealous? Threatened? Were Josh and Kat an item in the past? Adding to the discomfort, the guy who owns the place, Kat’s wealthy boyfriend Sergey (Rupert Friend) is a weird, older, lascivious Russian who does NOT seem to fit at all. The kind of guy who instinctively makes you check for the exits.
It feels like Hancock is setting us up for a dark assault plot; the kind of story where couples crumble and trust is splintered by the actions of one man. And sure enough, Sergey does get Iris alone at the beach, where he asks her to apply his sunscreen before trying to turn it into more. We’ve already heard Iris admit to being a killer, but it’s still a shock when she returns to the house covered in Sergey’s dark red blood. WAY too much blood. He forced himself on me – I had no choice.
Josh and co. are dumbfounded, but not for the reason you’d think (you know, the standard my girlfriend just slit a guy’s throat reason). They’re rocked, and Iris panics, until Josh barks a command that stops her in her tracks. Iris! Go to sleep. Her pupils turn white, she freezes stock still, and the clues scattered across Companion’s first act come together in a delightful AHA!
Iris is a robotic entity. She’s like the next iteration of Samantha, the operating system in Spike Jonze’s HER - a physical, artificial companion, with a digital core, processing silicon devotion. Suddenly, the phrase I had no choice takes on an extra weight. She’s programmed to obey, to do no harm, and to love her better half with no hesitation. Oh, and isn’t it cute that her name, Iris, is Siri spelled backwards?
How does Companion explore things like consent, control and objectification?
Let’s be honest, plenty of us write off genre movies – horror, thriller, romcom – as unserious cinema. But they’re a fantastic delivery system for all kinds of deeply-felt themes: trauma, assault, loneliness, grief. Props to writer-director Drew Hancock, who’s squeezed a cogent message into Companion about men who feel compelled to have ownership and control over their girlfriends. And hey, it’s not exactly subtext: this guy literally owns his girlfriend.
There’s tons of clues to this that play differently after the penny drops about who Iris really is. Like how Josh keeps using a nickname for Iris – beep boop – that sounds cute at first, until you realise he’s just making robot sounds at his pretty new toy, instead of using her name. After they have sex, Iris reminds him I just want you to be happy Josh, but he cuts her off with a blunt Iris, go to sleep – like he’s putting his phone on silent. It’s a command, and she obeys it.
The uneasy bit is recognising that there’s men who’d happily sign up for this gross, lopsided arrangement. And worse, Hancock reminds us that this isn’t new. It’s not as if technology has initiated the idea of objectifying women; it just makes it far simpler to execute for men like Josh – single men who don’t have other levers to pull for companionship, like wealth or fame.
Take Kat, a living, breathing woman with, seemingly, the same problem as Iris: her boyfriend sees her as an accessory. I’m like his fucking car. We eat when he wants. Sleep when he wants. Fuck when he wants. Sergey is just as bad as Josh, then – he just “possesses” Kat in a different way. It’s amusing that Kat chooses a car for her accessory analogy, because that’s exactly the way Josh thinks of Iris. When tears roll down her cheeks, he deadpans: Those are just coming from a reservoir. Like wiper fluid. It gets topped off when I get you serviced.
But while cars wear out and need replacing, they don’t usually beg their owners to give them another shot. That’s where Iris finds herself when it’s obvious that her newfound murderousness is a dealbreaker for Josh. She knows she’s about to be dumped, or in her case, returned, decommissioned and crushed. How could he do this to her? She (quite literally) can’t process it. Iris’ pleading language is awfully reminiscent of an abused partner. Okay, I’m not real. But I’m still yours. We can get through this! We’ll go home, I’ll cook for you, talk with you, make love to you. I can make you happy Josh, I can make you so happy…
Companion flips the power imbalance when Iris gets her hands on Josh’s phone, and discovers the app that controls her. We’re talking settings for the colour of her eyes, the sound of her voice, and her self-defence, aggression and intelligence – which has been set to 40%. Wow Josh. It’s like the digital equivalent of gaslighting. Josh keeps Iris just bright enough to be stimulating, but not so smart that he’ll ever risk her getting any ideas.
“I don’t think of COMPANION as anything other than a relationship drama. At its core, the glue that holds it together is the story of a woman who is in a toxic relationship and is trying to escape it, and finds empowerment through discovery of self.”
~ writer-director Drew Hancock
So we’re rubbing our hands together when Iris slides her intelligence level all the way to 100%. Suddenly, it’s Josh who starts begging – an arc that reflects what a lot of women go through trying to escape a relationship with coercive control or domestic violence. His words are just what you might expect from an abuser’s “give me one more chance” speech. I still love you Iris. We can still go home, we can get through this. I can change! I can be a better boyfriend. I’ll finally treat you with the respect you deserve.
It’s actually very funny when Iris eventually gives Josh the classic It's not you, it's me breakup line (imagine how much of a dud boyfriend you’d have to be for a robot to split up with you). But it stems from Iris’s growth and her genuine discovery of self. Like we said earlier, the allegory isn’t exactly buried here. Iris might be artificial, but her parting shot to Josh could be the motivational poster for women with toxic boyfriends everywhere: I needed to tell you to your face, your days of controlling me are over.
What else does Companion have to say about toxic masculinity?
As Josh, Jack Quaid does a fantastic job of being likeable and empathetic – at first. We almost feel pity for him when the Empathix crew roll up to his door in flashback and unpack Iris for the first time. She’s literally a girlfriend in a box. Does she know she's a robot? Josh ponders. The engineer’s answer is music to a misogynist’s ears: Not at all. She'll be so fixated on you – your wants, your needs – it won't even occur to her. She's yours to do whatever you want with.
This whole ick is compounded by the slow leak of coercive control that Hancock feeds into the film as we get to know Josh better. In one scene, he shouts at his friend Kat You’re not leaving! and she shoots back I’m not your robot Josh, you can’t control me. Later, he deceives Patrick to win his loyalty, in an amazing mid-movie swerve you won’t see coming.
“There would be no arc if that kind of bad, controlling boyfriend started off being a villain; he needed to come in with nice-guy energy. That is probably the most dangerous kind of toxicity: The guy who comes at you like, ‘I’m a good guy, I’m your friend.’”
~ writer-director Drew Hancock
There’s a bigger plan behind Josh’s visit to this rich stranger’s home that we won’t spoil, but as it spins further out of his control, his aggressive poor me mindset reveals itself more and more. There’s real incel vibes when he moans, The world is just a big game, and it’s rigged against people like me. I’m a good guy! And what’ve I got to show for it? A one bedroom apartment and a sex robot. And I don't even own you, you're a rental! I deserve better than this.
But he doesn’t. He’s a self-absorbed narcissist with a below-average sized penis, according to Iris (we can only assume she has instant online access to those kinds of statistics, LOL). Josh is an abusive partner, emotionally and towards the film’s climax, physically. Seeing this violence against Iris has a profound effect, particularly because she's artificial. Josh knows he can throw Iris’s head against the floor and “she’ll be okay”. But the fact that he wants to do this in the first place shows exactly the kind of toxic intent that lurks under his surface.
How does Companion tap into the ethical implications of AI?
AI has seemingly endless powers, so it’s only natural to wonder if it can love us too. Hancock’s not the first filmmaker to ponder it: films like the aforementioned HER, Ex Machina and Maria Schrader’s brilliant I’m Your Man have all dug philosophically into the ethics and pitfalls of artificial affection. Companion throws another armful of bone-dry kindling onto that ever-raging fire. Is AI really going to help us, or hinder us in the long run?
On the one hand, our society’s in the grips of a so-called loneliness epidemic – so what’s wrong with a little companionship for those crying out for it, even if it’s artificial? Japan has been exploring this for years: Paro, a fluffy animatronic seal, is a cute-as-a-button animal therapy solution for seniors with all the upside, and zero fish needed. Just plug him in and pat away to your heart’s content.
Of course, keeping Nan company is a very different proposition to an angry incel who wants someone to cater to his every whim (especially the stickier X-rated ones). Josh doesn’t mince words when he explains Iris’ real purpose to her: You're an emotional support companion... that fucks. She rejects that truth, of course – I don't understand, I have memories! Summer jobs, college, I've been to Japan… the day we met, the oranges! Josh’s bland reply would be funny if it wasn’t so believable: Yeah, it's fake. I just picked it from a dropdown of meet cutes.
“What I was trying to convey in the story was, if AI is bad, it’s because of something a human did to manipulate it. I think if we wind up living in a TERMINATOR world, and AI takes over, it’ll be because of something a human programmed into it.”
~ writer-director Drew Hancock
Like an episode of Black Mirror, it’s not quiiiite our reality right now, but it’s SO CLOSE to being plausible that you could imagine the Apple or Amazon press release coming out tomorrow. It’s enough to make you shudder, and the extra horrifying bit is how Companion shows the human folk treating this future reality as a yawn; for the delivery and maintenance guys, it’s just another drop-off, or a model with a glitch. Iris is like any new tech: it’s a wow until it’s not. Empathix could release an Iris2.0 tomorrow (longer eyelashes? Bigger breasts? Just tick a box!) and today’s Iris would get replaced quicker than last year’s iPhone.
Companion ponders, if tech could make anything possible, where’s the moral line? Is owning one fembot enough – or could you rent more? Some might argue a man like Josh is better off with a fembot meeting his needs rather than a real human. But that would give Josh, and any man like him, zero opportunities for growth. These characters being so yeah, whatever, shrug about the existence of lifelike sentient lovers is chilling, pitch black satire. And when the moments of self-awareness pop in, they’re some of the best in the film – like when Josh shows Eli how he ‘modded’ Iris’ controls, and Eli replies: I’m sorry, did you jailbreak your sex bot?!
So - what’s the takeaway from Companion?
Like we said up top, Companion is a surprise packet that definitely packs more punch than you might give it credit for. At face value, writer-director Drew Hancock has crafted a hooky thriller with plenty of popcorn-munching kicks. A tight, clever B-movie with spills and kills, twists and turns, money and blood. You could leave that summary there, but it’s doing the film a disservice. Like Iris herself, there’s so much more being processed under the glossy facade.
Companion wants to hold a mirror up to a society that’s hooked together by a billion digital threads, but yearning for real connection. Is this what we’re signing up for? Is that where we’re heading? Do we want to pay monthly subscription fees for friends and lovers? The whole premise is also a very fuck yeah! takedown of male urges of dominance & ownership. Happily, we can see legions of teenage boys being lured into cinemas by the movie’s genre premise, then left with the dawning realisation that they’re being shown what NOT to become.
You could say Companion is a wolf in sheep’s clothing – and it’s probably Hollywood’s best toxic masculinity genre film since The Invisible Man, another techy coercive control allegory. And hey, you can’t spell toxic without a few zeroes and ones.
Keen for that deal to catch Companion in cinemas?
