It’s very easy for a movie like Companion to miss the mark with the same stuff we’ve seen before. I don’t blame Warner Bros. Discovery who distributed the movie through New Line Cinema for dumping it in late January.
Companion is the ying to the yang that was Subservience, which opened in September of last year. But this movie answers the biggest question I had after seeing it – Why did they give the androids sexual anatomy? It wasn’t a question in that movie if the father of the family was going to have sex with the android played by Megan Fox, but when.
Companion gives us a story that has been told before in The Stepford Wives, Westworld, Cherry 2000, Demon Seed, Blade Runner and even the old Twilight Zone episodes. Most of this movie’s cast wasn’t even born yet when those movies were released. Hell, their parents were still kids themselves. Drew Hancock, who wrote and directed this movie, doesn’t act like he’s touching on anything knew. But he weaves a nice story that I won’t give much away except what has been already shown in the trailers.
Sophie Thatcher plays Iris, a pleasure companion android belonging to the weaselly Josh (Jack Quaid). They go to an isolated lake house that belongs to the wealthy but sleazy Sergey (Rupert Friend) and his partner, Kat (Megan Suri). Also there are same-sex couple, Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage).
Almost from the start, Josh seems to treat Iris badly. After they have sex or to be more bluntly, Josh fucks her, he turns his back to her and tells her to go to sleep. She’s unaware that she’s an android until shed kills Sergey when he tries to sexually assault her down near the beach of the lake. Bloodied, she claims it was in defense but is erratic until Josh tells her to go to sleep. And she shuts down.
What happens next I won’t say because it gives too much away. But Hancock weaves a plot that is a reflection of the dominant/submissive people in every relationship. (Just face it! It does exist in varying lengths and extremes.) And you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce there’s an android in the Eli/Patrick relationship. The hints and clues are there before it’s revealed.
At the beginning of the movie, we see Iris and Josh “meeting” at a supermarket which draws up images of the women in The Stepford Wives walking through the aisles. They “meet” when Patrick knocks over the oranges. But what actually happened was Josh got the model from a company Empathix and once he activates her, she shows him affection and he balls her.
But what we learn from other Empathix employees is that customers do worse things to the models than be curt and demanding when they want to talk after sex. Of course, Iris isn’t sure she wants to accept that she is an android but she can give the weather forecast whenever asked.
There’s a reason a lot of men my age in my mid-40s and even older go after much younger women. It’s about control. Quaid is about a decade older than Thatcher and it’s not a coincidence in casting. Even when they show up at the lake house, there’s a feeling people see her as outsider although they’re more acceptable of the Eli/Patrick relationship.
Both Thatcher and Suri are about the same age and a conversation between Iris and Kat early in the movie implies Kat is worried Sergey might get his own pleasure companion android. And Sergey thinks he can sex with Iris because she’s just a piece of property. But she has other plans for everyone else when she learns what’s really happening.
The movie is an examination of the gaslighting, control and abuse that happens in too many relationships. And sometimes, someone can very easily control another. I’ve known too many women who say they’ve “escaped” their partners. But the scariest part of the movie is we see just how bad Josh can be once he thinks he can get away with it.
An abuser tests the waters. If a person allows the abuse, it escalates. If they don’t, then they move on. The irony of the name of the company is a derivative of empathy. Yet, what they’re doing is enabling people to grow their sadistic and disturbing natures.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 