Review: COMPANION ( first act spoilers)

Caution: The publicity material for this film includes spoilers, not just the trailer but the poster. If you want to go into the movie uninfluenced, read this review after you have seen it.

A prologue signalling The Stepford Wives' influence leads to a meet cute between Iris and Josh. Cut to Josh driving Iris to a country cabin to introduce her to his friends. The cabin is a mansion and her friends are one percenters which makes Iris nervous. Once in, the house owner, a Russian wealthmonster, and others greet Iris variously with warmth or sniffy sarcasm; she was right to be anxious. Nevertheless, she does engage in conversation with the others, eloquently speaking of love at first sight over dinner and, later, draws out the sarcy one to reveal the control in her relationship with the house owner. 

The next morning, Iris prepares to go as planned out to the nearby lake to spend time with Josh but he demurs and she goes on solo. The owner appears, escalating a seduction routine into sexual assault which ends in his violent death at her hands. She rejoins the others, coated in blood, holding a knife. Josh gets up and yells, "Iris, go to sleep!" Her eyes roll back instantly until they are white blanks and she freezes. Iris is a robot.

This Gen Z thriller which the publicity took pains to point out was from the folk that brought you the likes of Barbarian. If that made you expect some narrative rug pulls you were right. The revelation of Iris being a cyborg is the least of what follows but it itself follows her opening narration as she glides a trolley down the aisle of a supermarket that the two times she felt truly happy were when she met Josh and when she killed him. That happens within the first five minutes of the film. When the writing is like that the decision about what to reveal in the run up to release must be intense. Robert Eggers had over a year between the announcement of Nosferatu and it hitting the screen. Then again, whatever alterations he made to that well trodden story were only ever going to be at the indy level. Companion's high concept sci fi premise could not afford to risk audience apathy by making it just look like a social drama for the young folks.

That over with, what does Companion offer? The Stepford Wives cornered the market in the notion of male fantasy manifest as magic with the theme of control riding high in the age of second wave feminism. Blade Runner blurred the effect of self awareness in the fabricated human, showing both its power and vulnerability. What's left? Updating the concept from mechanical robots to lifelike hardware controlled by a phone app is good and drives effective plot triggers but it's not much more than cosmetic. Of course, a 21C upgrade was going to be a phone app. What the creative team have done here is dress things up to look like the near future but have reached right back to grasp the essentials: control and its nemesis self awareness.

Queen bitch Kat is frank about the control she and her equally human consort put at the active centre of their relationship. Her conversation with Iris about this involves Kat joking about needing to become a human before she can begin to confront her situation. This is key. Iris doesn't know she's a robot and deflects Kat's innuendos about self-control. As soon as that breach is made, the breakdown of order begins and the rest is spoilable plot.

The fabrication of controlled humans is an ancient one and persists because control is an everpresent issue in human interaction. Iris' naturalness disturbs the couple Kat and Sergei whose relationship is founded on coercion. Their response to Iris doesn't puzzle us and we are more inclined to judge Josh for maintaining an association with a cybernetic sex slave. Kat's comparison between Iris and a sock Josh might jerk off into lands with him. The Jurassic Park question of we can but should we hits straight away.

That this is maintained while the narrative has switched to a sruvivalist thriller until the two thread merge is testament to writing and creative nurture that puts this film a notch above the already impressive It's What's Inside. There is space in the writing that allows for compelling action, more questions of sentience and some very funny dialogue. Add some strong digital cinematography (sorry, I don't miss film grain) and sharp music scoring and you have one of the most vibrant social thrillers you'll see this year.

Jack Quaid tightropes the barrier of average young guy with an emerging selfishness and the thing he becomes quite effortlessly. However, if Yellowjackets, The Boogieman and Heretic didn't convince you, Sophie Thatcher is the current young star of genre stories. Her range of glassy fragility and bad girl toughness makes her characters the ones you'll fix on. This is her film.