The following article contains spoilers for Companion.
Companion, the most recent AI horror film to hit theaters, isgetting rave reviews. The film comes from newcomer Drew Hancock who, with the support ofBarbariandirector Zach Cregger, this time a producer,has achieved a unique genre movie that’s not only clever and funny, but it makes you want to talk about it. However, as Hancock has confirmed,Companionwas originally very different.At first, it feltlike every other AI horror movie.Fortunately, Hancock decided to change his script.
Companionfollows a couple who arrive at a huge mansion owned by Russian millionaire Sergey (Rupert Friend), which is located in the middle of nowhere. Josh and Iris (Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher) have just begun their relationship, and Iris still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable with Josh’s friends. But all of that will change during the weekend. Hopefully.
And it does. Probably more than they all planned. As it turns out,Iris is revealed to be a robot, but she still “feels” things. Her reaction to Sergey’s physical assault is self-defense, which ultimately leads to Iris stabbing him repeatedly. When Josh tells Iris to shut herself down,viewers find out what the plan was all along. Basically, they were all going tosteal from Sergey while incriminating Iris for everything that happened.
Hancock spoke to Entertainment Weeklyabout the movie,and he made a startling revelation. When he originally conceived the story,the idea was to portray Iris as a villain, just like all “killer robot” films(Terminatorand others). Fortunately,he saw an opportunity to change things aroundand pushed for a more interesting film:
“‘Companion’ just kind of popped in my head one day, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Originally, the very first incarnation of the idea, and I don’t know if I ever shared this with Sophie, butIris was the villain. They go to this cabin in the middle of the woods, and then you find outone of them is a robot who goes haywire and starts killing Josh’s friends.
I started thinking about Iris being alienated in that sense that you’re meeting a partner’s family and friends and how alienating that feels. Then I realized, ‘This would be interesting to tell the story from the point of view of the robot.What if the robot was the most human character in the story?’ That’s when I fell in love with the idea… It’s not AI gone wrong,it’s AI gone right.”
‘Companion’s Twist is Appealing, Especially to its Cast
Both Quaid and Thatcher are extremely interesting in their roles.Josh overflows with toxic masculinity, andhis relationship with Iris transcends into a very dark and sinister exploration of our views of AI, learning machines, and robots in general. Iris represents a perfect insight in which a robot learns to defend itself,but is not as coldblooded as everyone thinks she is, especially Josh.
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Per Quaid’s remarks to EW: “I love that the character with the most humanity is the robot in this story. A lesser movie would’ve probably made my character the protagonist and Iris the antagonist who’s going crazy, and Josh has to save the day. But I love how this movie is the slightly more realistic version where Josh is very selfish and is doing this all for incredibly selfish reasons.”
Thatcher was doubtful at first about her capacity to embody such a complicated and multilayered figure.But she pulled it off in what’s alreadyone of our favorite performances of the year.This is what she says to EW: “I remember being scared and thinking that I couldn’t pull it off. The script’s amazing, but I was scared by it in the way that there’s so many technicalities that I thought I couldn’t pull off.But I had enough time to prepare that it just felt right.I was over the moon and terrified.”
