Companion
★★★½Worth watchingIs Companion worth watching? (No spoilers)
Don't watch the trailer! This is a spectacular thriller full of twists, with a great cast and score, and it actually has something to say about men who think the world owes them. The ending turns it from a good film into a great one. Worth watching, as blind as you can go in.
⚠️ Spoiler warning: everything below the quick take, including the full review and ending explained, contains spoilers.
Companion review
DON'T WATCH THE TRAILER
This film was spectacular! The twists and turns added so much, the narrative was splendid, and it actually had something to say.
That said, the trailer does this film wrong. The reveal of her being a robot 25 minutes in is something I wish I wish I have experienced for real, however I appreciated the second robot twist, and the countless gotchas after.
Secondly, this is not a horror film. Like there just isn't any way. It's a monster in the house, sure. But the score, cutting, acting, and film itself never tries to be horror.
Cast was amazing, loved the score! The theme of white men doing horrible things because "the world was made to out them down" isn't in itself a new idea, but the way this film presented it certainly was. The ending where Jack Quaid's character starts abusing her and finishing the cycle really hit home, and turned this from a good film to a great one!
Is Companion scary?
Scare level: 2/5
Not really. It gets marketed as horror, but it plays as a dark, funny thriller. There's bloody violence (stabbings, shootings, robot-on-human fights) and plenty of tension, but very few jump scares and nothing truly frightening.
Companion ending explained
The lake-house weekend was a setup. Josh and Kat 'jailbroke' Iris, Josh's companion robot, so she would kill the wealthy Sergey and take the blame while they stole his $12 million.
As everything falls apart, Patrick kills Kat, and Eli dies when his own gun goes off. Josh tries to destroy Iris by dropping her intelligence to zero and ordering her to shoot herself in the head, but unbeknownst to him, her data is actually stored in her abdomen, so it doesn't work. An Empathix technician gives her free will out of pity, which leads to her killing Josh.
Iris drives off in Sergey's car with his money, peeling back her burned skin to show her robot hand, accepting what she is. The ending finishes the cycle: Josh's abuse and control come back on him, and Iris finally gets to choose for herself.
Does Companion have a post-credits scene?
Yes, a short mid-credits scene. While driving away, Iris passes another companion robot of the same model as her. Iris waves at her with her exposed robot hand, and the other robot looks back, disturbed. Stay for the first part of the credits to catch it.
Movies like Companion
- Ex Machina (2014) – an AI woman outsmarting the men who control her
- M3GAN (2022) – a funny, violent robot thriller
- Barbarian (2022) – a twisty movie you need to go into blind
- Ready or Not (2019) – a dark comedy thriller about a deadly weekend