- UK release: January 2025
- Director: Drew Hancock · Writer: Drew Hancock
- Studio / distributor: New Line Cinema; BoulderLight Pictures; Vertigo Entertainment
- Genre: Science fiction thriller / dark comedy · Runtime: 97 minutes (BBFC 18)
- Main cast: Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets, Heretic) as Iris; Jack Quaid (The Boys, Scream) as Josh; Lukas Gage (The White Lotus) as Patrick; Megan Suri (Never Have I Ever) as Kat
- IMDb: 6.9 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 93% critics / 88% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
The artificial-companion film has become its own little genre, from The Stepford Wives to Ex Machina to last year’s M3GAN, and most of them ask the same polite question: what happens when the machine starts to think for itself? Companion, the feature debut of television writer Drew Hancock, asks a ruder one. It is less interested in whether the robot has a soul than in the kind of man who would buy one, and that small shift of aim is what gives a familiar premise its teeth. This is being sold with its cards close to its chest, which is the right call, so I will keep mine there too.
The setup
Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is in love. She and Josh (Jack Quaid) are driving out to a lakeside house owned by a wealthy older man named Sergey, for a weekend with a small group of his friends. Iris is nervous about being liked, sweet to the point of anxiety, the slightly overcommitted girlfriend who wants the trip to go well. Then the weekend goes wrong, violently and early, and in the wreckage Iris learns something about herself that reframes every gentle, doting beat that came before. To say much more would be to hand over the film’s engine. What I can say is that the marketing’s coyness is justified: the first act is built to be misread, and the pleasure of the second is watching it correct.
The cast
Sophie Thatcher carries the film, and it is a genuinely difficult ask. Iris has to be naive without being thin, and then has to travel a long emotional distance at speed once the floor drops away, all while the script keeps adjusting how much agency we are allowed to believe she has. Thatcher, who was the standout in Yellowjackets and held her own opposite Hugh Grant in Heretic, plays the early softness with just enough flicker behind the eyes that the turn lands as revelation rather than reset. Jack Quaid is doing something sly and against type. After The Boys and the Scream reboot he has a likeable, faintly hapless screen presence, and the film weaponises it: Josh is exactly the sort of nice, aggrieved young man you would never suspect, and Quaid lets the entitlement leak out by degrees. Lukas Gage and Megan Suri sharpen the ensemble around them, with Harvey Guillén bringing a note of warmth the rest of the cast cannot afford.
The craft
For a first feature this is impressively controlled. Hancock writes and directs, and he keeps the thing tight: ninety-seven minutes, one main location, no fat. Eli Born’s photography makes the lake house bright and almost wholesome in the early going, which is precisely why the violence reads as such an intrusion when it arrives. There is real wit in the construction, small details that mean one thing on the way in and another on the way out, the kind of film that rewards a second watch because half of it is hiding in plain sight. Hrishikesh Hirway’s score knows when to lean comic and when to go cold. The tone is the trickiest balancing act, swinging between satire and genuine menace, and Hancock holds it more often than not. When the blood comes it is sudden and unglamorous, earning the eighteen certificate without wallowing in it.
How it stacks up
The obvious reference points are Ex Machina and M3GAN, and Companion is shrewder than the second and warmer than the first. Where Alex Garland’s film was a cool chamber piece about creation and deception, this one is a relationship thriller wearing a science fiction coat, closer in spirit to a particularly mean episode of Black Mirror, or to The Stepford Wives read straight rather than for camp. It shares with Her an interest in what people want from a manufactured partner, but it has none of that film’s tenderness; it is here to indict, not to ache. The premise of control, surveillance and a person whose memories and behaviour can be adjusted by someone else hits several of my own soft spots at once, and the film is smart enough to use them rather than just name-check them.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have been strongly on side, with a Rotten Tomatoes score in the low nineties and a recurring note of pleased surprise that a January genre release has this much going on. Audiences are a touch cooler at 88%, and the more lukewarm IMDb average of 6.9 hints at viewers who came for a straight horror and got a sharper, talkier thing instead. The split is the usual one: critics reward the idea and the control, while a slice of the audience wanted more scares and fewer arguments. I land closer to the critics here, though for once not because of the message. It is simply a well-built, surprising film that respects how little time it has.
Verdict
Companion is the rare genre debut that has a real idea and the discipline to deliver it without sermonising. It is tense, funny in the right ugly places, and anchored by a Sophie Thatcher performance that ought to do for her what these breakout roles are supposed to do. It loses a little altitude in the final stretch, where the mechanics of the plot take over from the unease that powered the first hour, and the satire is sometimes broader than the premise needs. None of that undoes it. This is exactly the kind of lean, rewatchable, idea-driven science fiction I will happily go back to, the sort of film whose first act plays completely differently once you know. 8⁄10.
Availability: In UK cinemas now. One to catch on a big screen while the twist is still yours to discover, before the internet does it for you.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Companion arrived on premium video on demand within weeks of its cinema run and settled onto streaming via Max, becoming the sort of word-of-mouth title people press on friends with a careful “don’t read anything about it first”. Its reputation has held up as one of the smarter studio genre releases of its year, and it has done Sophie Thatcher’s profile no harm at all. The current way to watch it in the UK is digital rental or purchase, with streaming availability shifting by platform and region.
BBFC content advice
Rated 18 by the BBFC for strong bloody violence, injury detail, sexual threat, language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Scenes include stabbings, shootings, beatings and use of improvised weapons, resulting in bloody detail and injuries. A person is made to set their arm on fire, and to shoot themself in the head. There are sequences of controlling and abusive behaviour between partners.
Threat and horror: A killer stalks a terrified person, and there are sequences of intense gun threat.
Language: Strong language (‘f**k’) occurs, as well as milder terms (‘bitch’, ‘shit’, ‘screw’, ‘asshole’, ‘ass’, ‘God’, ‘damn’, ‘hell’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Christ’), and a middle figure gesture.
Sex: A man moans, implying he has just climaxed, and there is audio suggesting characters are having sex behind a closed door. There are also moderate verbal sex references, including to penis size.
Discrimination: A man behaves in a sexist manner.
Sexual violence and sexual threat: A man assaults a woman, but she fights him off.
Injury detail: Corpses and wounds feature some bloody and gory detail.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
