It’s always an interesting concept when technology crosses with horror, when a character is playing God (or benefitting from someone’s creation) it never goes smoothly. Here Companion continues almost on the same trail as 2023’s M3gan but instead of a child’s doll this is a sex doll/romantic robot partner who seems as humanoid as possible; and instead of the robot being the villain, in Companion you really empathise with the situation Iris is put in and at every turn you want her to succeed.

Sophie Thatcher plays Iris, attractive but nervous partner to the confident and brash Josh, played by Jack Quaid who seems on paper like he’s about to have a fantastic year with John Wick-esque superhero flick Novocaine coming soon. Thatcher, who almost stole the whole film from Grant in Heretic, is at her creepy best here in such a multi-layered character who has to at times be believably dangerous whilst also robotically dumb. She is an actress to watch for the future and perhaps one of the most exciting voices in horror in the last 12 months. The rest of the cast could’ve been better, I wasn’t quite as convinced with Lucas Gage, I felt like he could’ve done a lot more with his character than he gave.

The concept is good, to begin with it plays out like a Black Mirror episode (maybe the type of Black Mirror episode we were expecting when the American’s brought it to Netflix), but when you get to the Sergei and the safe money aspect of the story I felt that was too far-fetched and distracting from the central concept. I don’t know the relationship between Josh and Kat (Megan Suri) and how and why they thought they would get away with all of those millions. Sergei was such a one-note character that it almost felt strange to see a kinda respected actor in Rupert Friend playing the role, it reminded me a lot of when Lee Pace just turns up in Bodies Bodies Bodies for a bit.

The score is very clever, it certainly elevates the creepy scenes and kept me engrossed in the dramatic action. The cinematography is fine, there are some specific scenes of beauty but then sometimes I felt that it did not use the environment as much as it could have. I feel like I barely knew what Sergei’s house looked like despite most of the film being set there, a more interesting film would have used the space to it’s advantage. The sign of a great movie house/apartment is being able to close your eyes and map the location out because the blocking and the camera angles have used the home effectively. I do understand that Drew Hancock is a writer first, director second. Zach Cregger (Barbarian) is a producer here and the story is that he was going to direct but it was passed onto Drew. Sometimes the writer inside of him wins over the director inside of him, and you can see that when Quaid’s character spends an awful amount of time explaining things to Iris that don’t need to be spelt out too much.

Overall it’s a decent entertaining film, breezy at 97 minutes (as all concept horrors like this should be). It certainly thinks it’s smarter than it is, and the side story about the millions of dollars could’ve been refined a lot more, but the two leads do make this film watchable. I will be interested to see what they do next, because both of them could become superstars if the planets align.