It’s a rare thing to walk into a film blind these days — no trailer, no thumbnails, no algorithmic spoilers clawing at your curiosity. I did exactly that with Companion, and if there’s one piece of advice this review offers before we dig in, it’s this: do the same. Because once you know what Iris is, you can’t unknow it. And while Companion might survive its spoiler-heavy marketing, it flourishes most when it unfolds on its own terms — not the studio’s.
The bones of Companion aren’t revolutionary: a weekend getaway, a group of friends, a chilling revelation, and a cabin that traps more than just people. But the execution? Tight. Suspenseful. Often breathless. Drew Hancock’s direction plays like someone who’s been studying genre cinema with a scalpel, not a pen.
This is a film with energy — not the frantic, style-over-substance kind, but a persistent, pulse-tightening rhythm. Every time you think it’s winding down, it throws another encounter, another layer of conflict, another knife (sometimes literal) into the mix. What could have been a one-note allegory turns into a satisfying cat-and-mouse thriller with enough twisty turns to stay ahead of your predictions.
Sophie Thatcher — still riding the momentum of Heretic — cements her status here as one of this generation’s most magnetic screen presences. Her portrayal of Iris, a robotic girlfriend wrapped in a warm, almost too-perfect veneer, is both unsettling and deeply moving. There’s something fascinating about watching her affection overflow while Josh, played by Jack Quaid, recoils with a kind of casual coldness. The way he speaks to her — clipped, dismissive, condescending — gives away his nature long before the film does. He’s the kind of “nice guy” who thinks affection is his to manage, ration, or mute. Iris, meanwhile, mirrors back everything he thinks he wants… until she doesn’t.
Their dynamic is a smart inversion of the traditional AI cautionary tale. We’re not scared of the robot going rogue — we’re scared of what it reveals about us. Iris isn’t dangerous because she’s artificial. She’s dangerous because she stops pretending she’s not aware.
For a film about power, autonomy, and technological submission, Companion doesn’t forget to breathe. The humor here is sharp, timed just right, and cleverly placed where it can sting the most. It never deflates the tension but rather underlines it — like a bad date joke delivered mid-breakup. The editing does a lot of heavy lifting here too, tightening scenes to keep things tense without ever dragging the runtime or overstaying the premise.
What truly makes Companion interesting — not groundbreaking, but certainly thoughtful — is how it handles its themes. There’s AI, sure. But also dating dynamics, emotional manipulation, toxic love dressed in software updates. It never stops to deliver a Talk on ethics or gender politics. Instead, it floats these ideas quietly, like background code. You feel them more than you hear them. That’s a smart choice.
It’s a film that trusts the audience to notice things — a glance that lasts too long, a laugh that doesn’t land, a tone of voice that cuts deeper than any twist. It highlights modern fears about intimacy and control not by dissecting them, but by letting them simmer in an eerie, blood-flecked pressure cooker.
That said, Companion isn’t flawless. While it’s loaded with suspense and well-timed surprises, it doesn’t reinvent the genre wheel. There are familiar echoes of Ex Machina, Black Mirror, even The Stepford Wives. The central premise might be a little too easy to guess — especially for genre fans — and a few conveniences in the plot logic (especially in the third act) might pull more analytical viewers out of the moment. And despite the film’s ambition, some tonal leaps between horror and humor may not land for everyone.
But for a tight, entertaining thriller made on a modest budget, these are forgivable flaws. It’s a film that knows exactly what it is — and thanks to its performances and smart pacing, that’s more than enough.
Companion (2025) doesn’t blow open new doors, but it confidently walks through the ones it builds. With a magnetic performance from Sophie Thatcher and an impressively nasty subversion of Jack Quaid’s usual charm, it delivers an experience that’s both fun and thoughtful — a movie that raises questions about affection, power, and autonomy without making a spectacle of its own thesis.
And if you haven’t seen the trailer? Don’t. Just hit play. Let Iris introduce herself.
Rating: 7/10 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆