‘Companion’ Review: Are Horror Audiences Ready to Root for an AI Final Girl?

Sophie Thatcher gives a fun performance as an android who rebels against the toxic man who bought her. But is the best robot really more valuable than the worst human?

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is quick to regale anyone who will listen with the story of the two best moments of her life: the day she first laid eyes on her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) in a meet-cute in the produce aisle, and the day she decided to kill him.

That juxtaposition between the saccharine and the brutal should be expected from a film like “Companion,” whose marketing has saturated viewers with reminders that it hails from the studio behind “The Notebook” and the creative team behind “Barbarian.” But anyone who enjoyed Zach Cregger’s endlessly twisty 2022 horror masterpiece is likely to walk into “Barbarian” producer Drew Hancock’s “Companion” knowing that everything won’t be as it seems.

As they flirt and gently bicker en route to a weekend getaway at a remote cabin with two other couples, Iris and Josh appear to be the epitome of young love. But when an argument begins to get out of hand, Josh is quick to power his girlfriend down and reboot her. Worst case scenario, he knows he even has the option to restore her to her full factory settings.

Yes, Iris is a sex robot that Josh purchased to be his personal companion. The convincingly lifelike replica of a girlfriend is even equipped with technology that imprints her brain with true love for the first person she lays eyes on. That sense of love leaves her willing to do anything within the realm of reason and human decency for her partner — but naturally, that’s not good enough for the kind of guy who seriously considers investing in an android lover.

The hot trend is for users to “jailbreak” their sex robots and introduce new traits not found in the factory settings. Josh has done just that, modding Iris so that she has a much stronger sense of survival and aggression than your off-the-rack substitute for social interaction. It’s all part of his plan to get her to murder his friend’s mafioso boyfriend, allowing him to steal his multi-million dollar fortune for himself with any culpability. But he didn’t account for the fact that her newfound aggression would give her a worldview that encompassed more than his immediate needs, and the mix of humans and newly self-interested androids inhabiting the cabin soon find themselves in a bloody showdown they never anticipated.

There’s a lot to enjoy about “Companion,” from Hancock’s sleek visuals, smooth pacing, and twisty script, to Thatcher’s uncanny performance as an android who borders on humanity without ever crossing the threshold. But while the film offers a snapshot of human-AI relations at an inflection point, it doesn’t fully probe some of the implications of its premise.

From a structural standpoint, Iris is a quintessential “Final Girl” — she is introduced as a victim of violent circumstances but refuses to perish as one, ultimately gaining agency by fighting back and outlasting many of her peers. It’s a stock character arc that has effectively become the bildungsroman of the horror genre, providing countless filmmakers the opportunity to experiment with new monsters and ideas within a widely accepted framework. Hancock’s biggest swing is the decision to place a robot in the role that is typically reserved for human women — and the film’s success or failure will hinge on how willing audiences are to root for AI.

From “Black Mirror” to “Her,” many films and shows have looked toward a future where increasingly lifelike AI creations force us to answer complicated ethical questions about what it actually means to be a human. “Companion” opts to portray Iris as immediately sympathetic, giving her a journey to freedom that will feel familiar to any horror fan. The film’s very existence is an interesting phenomenon, as it offers a portrayal of sentient AI robots that’s largely uncritical of anything except the people who buy them.

Once we learn that Josh is a less than ideal person, it’s taken for granted that Iris’ freedom is something worth rooting for, and that decisions like lowering her intelligence settings to make her less capable of advocating for herself are evil. But should that be the case? At a moment when much of the cinephile community is demonstrating a knee-jerk opposition to anything that can be labeled AI — sometimes with the best of intentions, other times with a single-minded focus on keeping things the same that borders on reactionary — the question of whether a victimized robot is inherently better than a toxic human might not be as easily answerable as a film like “Companion” hopes. The film’s salience depends on how sympathetic each viewer is to the idea that robots should have some level of human rights, but its real legacy could end up being the stress test it provides to well-established movie tropes at a moment when even our definition of personhood is up for renegotiation.

Grade: B

A New Line Cinema release, “Companion” opens in theaters on Friday, January 31.

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