James Berardinelli review - *** out of ****

https://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/companion

There’s real-world AI and there’s movie-world AI. The nexus between the two is small but that hasn’t stopped motion pictures from dabbling with science fiction stories that are still more “fiction” than “science.” With these movies emerging more as a drip-drip-drip than a flood, that market is not yet oversaturated. The concept of a sentient robot isn’t exactly new – hell, it was a staple of the original Star Trek series back in the late 1960s and even then it wasn’t groundbreaking – but movies like Companion are paying greater attention to where the line exists between coding and awareness and what it means for a robot to be alive.

Companion doesn’t get too bogged down in the moral and ethical implications of all this but it also doesn’t gloss over it. It also never really answers the key question of whether Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is sentient. Has she attained life or is all this just an example of extremely sophisticated programming? Real-world AI is nowhere close to having to grapple with such weighty matters but movies aren’t faced with limitations. Companion is playing in the Ex Machina field, dealing with similar ideas and finding some of the same concepts. The two may have different goals – Companion is more mainstream and action-oriented – but there is surprising overlap.

The movie opens with a meet-cute as Iris and Josh (Jack Quaid) lock eyes in the produce aisle of a grocery store. But a portentous voiceover contradicts the seeming lightness of the scene as Iris tells of the two transformative moments in her life: the day she met Josh and the day she killed him. Initially, viewers are led to believe Iris and Jack are just an ordinary couple in the honeymoon stage of their relationship. They’re going on a trip to an isolated lake house where Josh’s friends are gathering for a getaway. Including Iris and Josh, there are three couples. The other two are Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), who are devoted to one another, and Kat (Megan Suri) and Sergey (Rupert Friend), who are having an affair. The ultra-rich and super-spoiled Sergey, whom Kat describes as “a bad boyfriend,” owns the place.

The revelation about Iris’ true nature is spoon-fed to the audience through hints until it is finally dropped in our laps. She’s an ulta-realistic sex-bot whose programming allows her to function as more than a masturbation toy. She can function socially, hold conversations, and mimic feelings. Josh controls her using an app on his phone that allows him to change her voice and appearance, modify her intelligence, and determine how much independence she has. He has also “modded” her, giving him access to features not officially available and, by changing those – especially the one that prevents her from doing harm – he loses control.

Should we consider Iris to be a “she” or an “it”? Writer/director Drew Hancock wants the pronoun to be the former. The movie sets up the viewer to sympathize with Iris (this isn’t an adult-oriented M3gan), but is this a case of anthropomorphizing a construct that happens to look human? When Josh commands Iris to extend her hand over the open flame of a candle (something shown in the trailers), is he torturing her? Or is he merely illustrating a point? And when Iris describes love, is she feeling the emotion? Or is she reciting something embedded in her programming?

The narrative is pretty standard thriller material involving murders and double-crosses. Without the AI element, it would have been significantly less interesting. The ending in particular is something of a mess and more than a little contrived. Hancock, whose resume extends back about two decades and includes connections to Jimmy Kimmel and Tenacious D, maintains a warped sense of humor throughout. This is most evident in the shifting performance of Jack Quaid, whose calculating Josh is sometimes shown not as he is but as the loving goofball that Iris perceives him to be. Sophie Thatcher is effective as Iris, keeping viewers uncertain about on which side of the sentience line the character falls.

Companion doesn’t swing for the fences the way Ex Machina does nor does it address some of the most intriguing issues head-on. But the way it toys with AI concepts and interweaves them into the storyline makes it a welcome companion piece for other like-minded movies that have emerged in the past 10-15 years. It’s definitely not a pure thought-piece: there is a body count and quite a bit of blood (although this is by no means a gore-fest). But it seeks to do more with familiar tropes than merely create an unimaginative story around them. The ending is disappointing but the rest of the movie is not.