Companion info:
Director: Drew Hancock
Writer: Drew Hancock
Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, and Megan Suri
Hello and welcome to another week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. It’s true that I stick to the major releases a lot of the time. I do that for several reasons. Living where I do, my local theaters don’t always show the limited-release stuff and if I go to see a movie with a companion, it’s the wide releases that they would normally choose as well. But sometimes I get lucky, and I get to see a movie like this. It’s still a wide release but feels smaller (no malice intended towards “Companion”). It came down between this and “Flight Risk” and from what I’ve been reading, I made the right decision.
Ok, before I get too deep into this gem, it’s time for the official spoiler warning. There will be huge spoilers ahead and a possibility of major plot reveals as well. So, here is your chance to go back to my homepage here and see what else I have in store for you. Then come back here after you’ve read it to finish it up.
Ok, so I really enjoy it when movies mix things up a little bit. The main character of “Companion” is Iris (played by Thatcher) and she tells us right during the opening sequence that she kills Josh (Quaid). At that point, it’s just enjoying the ride while we get to that part of the story. After seeing the trailer, I had somewhat of an idea of what “Companion” was about, but I had lots of it wrong (and I’m glad) so I could see this play out.
It starts pretty normal with Josh and Iris driving in a smart car and eventually arriving at a very secluded cabin/cottage in the middle of nowhere. It was more of a mansion than a cottage, but you get the idea. At this point, Josh and Iris just look like a normal couple where one is uneasy because they are going to spend the weekend with the other one’s friends. As so, Iris seems very uneasy with the idea of being there but wants to make Josh happy. The rest of the cast are Josh’s friends and people he knows. Kat (Suri), Sergey (Rupert Friend), Eli (Harvey Guillén), and Patrick (Gage).
After a night of partying, Josh doesn’t want to go to the lake, so he sends Iris down to enjoy the water instead of waiting on him. Sergey shows up and starts making advancements towards Iris and soon she fights back, and Sergey ends up being killed. When she shows back up to the house covered in blood, this is when we learn the truth. Iris is actually a robot. A flashback shows how Josh acquired his new “Companion” and set her up with a love link (how they met) with memories and everything. Josh and Kat had set this whole thing up, so Iris could murder Sergey, and they could steal his money.
I think this will deserve a re-watch because as soon as you find out she is a robot, a lot of the way she was acting would probably make sense. But she honestly does a good job acting that way throughout. Besides her small role in “The Book of Boba Fett”, this is the first motion picture I’ve seen her in, and I was surprised by her abilities. You can see what else she has played in on IMDb of course. When she escapes (with Josh’s phone that controls her), the other remaining four go out searching for her in the woods, that’s when we also find out that Patrick is also a robot, and he is owned by Eli. Soon after Eli is killed while trying to stop Iris as she makes her way back to the house.
Armed with her new intelligence, she can almost get away until Josh resets Patrick, sets up a love link, and sends him out to find her and bring her back. However, with Patrick’s aggression turned up, he ends up killing a cop and Kat as well. Eventually, Iris gets the better of Josh and she does indeed kill him like she said she did…and it happens in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen on screen before. Iris is now free of Josh and sets out to live her own life. Not exactly sure how she is going to do that since she will need maintenance, but whatever.
For a movie that told you from the beginning how it was going to end, it did a surprising job of keeping you on your toes. Some of the secondary characters could have been a little more smoothed out, but both Thatcher and Gage played a pretty good robot if you ask me. Quaid was also his normal level of playing a great asshole/villain sort of guy… a role he seems to get slotted into quite a bit. Overall though, “Companion” was a fun movie and I mostly enjoyed it. What it was missing, it didn’t take away from the rest of the film. In the end, I give this a 7 out of 10 and I will surely watch it again when it’s available to stream somewhere.
Have you seen “Companion” yet? What are your thoughts on how the two actors played as robots? What did you think of the story? Would you want your own companion like what Josh or Eli had in the movie?
That’s it for this week’s review, please join me again next week when I will be back with another mindless movie review of some sort or you can stay here and check out some other reviews here as well. Thanks!
