Companion review
The first largely anticipated release of 2025 sets the tone for what’s shaping up to be a memorable year for genre movies.
This review will not contain specific spoilers aside from the reveal given in the movie’s trailer (and poster below). If you have managed to remain unspoiled of that…come back after seeing the movie. The end of the review will discuss a broader concept that touches on spoiler territory in a more roundabout way.
Companion
Directed by Drew Hancock
Written by Drew Hancock
Starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, Rupert Friend, Mark Menchaca and Woody Fu
Companion Review
The first highly anticipated release of 2025 delivers twists and turns, along with a lot of fun. Companion gained early buzz due to a clever teaser trailer. The second trailer gave away more than it probably needed to. We’ll discuss the reveal given away in the marketing…it would be hard to review Companion without it. Hell, it’s basically on the poster anyway. Other twists will be considered spoiler territory and left out of this review. Rest assured, Companion has more up its sleeve than the major reveal in its latest trailer. That’s about all the warnings I’m going to give about potential spoiler talk.
Jack Quaid and Sophie Thatcher star in Companion. A movie about a man and his life-like robot companion. That’s what the trailer lets you know. The plot of the movie, on the other hand, mostly falls into the spoiler zone. It’s full of surprises that we won’t give away here. What I can tell you is that Josh (Quaid) and Iris (Thatcher) are on a trip to a friend’s secluded home…deep in a forest isolation. The home belongs to a shady Russian millionaire named Sergey (Rupert Friend). Josh is longtime friends with his girlfriend Kat (Megan Suri). They’re joined by their friend Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage).
Needless to say, something goes horribly wrong. You can probably assume it has something to do with the robot in the mix. The how and what of it all drives the overall plot of Companion. It happens early in the film…sending the story off the rails (in a good way) and into a series of unexpected moments. Since the robot is out of the box already…we can discuss how much fun the story has with the concept. Iris is a fascinating character. Thatcher is terrific in the role. There is a lot of talk (and action) surrounding how Iris works. Everything from how she sounds to how smart she is can be controlled by Josh’s phone. A fact that Iris has suddenly become keenly aware of.
What Companion offers is a wild ride full of unexpected moments. Moments of shocking violence increase as the madcap festivities unfold. It’s also very funny. The ensemble cast is uniformly excellent…with Thatcher and Quaid confidently leading the way. And…that’s almost all I can say about it. So much of what makes Companion great is wrapped up in its twisted tale that should be entered blindly. I don’t generally like to write reviews this vaguely…but a piece like Companion calls for it. Take the recommendation to watch the movie with as little knowledge as possible. Which goes back to whether they needed to spoil that Iris is a robot in the first place. I suspect they arrived at the same issue with marketing the film as reviewers did covering it. You have to give people something.
In that vein…I’m going to move the discourse about this movie we can barely talk specifics about towards a broader concept that borders on spoiler talk in a more robust way. One that Companion utilizes excellently as the backbone for all its craziest impulses. Now is the time to definitively turn back, watch Companion, and then return later.
Iris, despite being a robot, exhibits some of the strongest final girl energy in recent memory. She learns truths, finds her strength, and takes control of her destiny. Or, at least, she tries to. There are multiple factors working against her…which makes her journey all the more interesting to watch unfold. It’s so interesting, in fact, that Iris would have won our Scare Value Award for Best Final Girl each of the past three years we’ve been doing the year end awards. With this release coming so early in 2025…there’s no way to know for sure if it will still be standing at the end of what looks to be a busy year in horror. Still…it’s hard to imagine that the character, and Thatcher’s portrayal, won’t be popping up at the end of December when we get down to that business.
That’s all I’m going to say about Companion. A movie that entertains and surprises from start to finish. One that you should carve out time to experience unspoiled. Or, at least, as vaguely spoiled as the film’s marketing and reading to this point of the review has made you. The first largely anticipated release of 2025 sets the tone for what’s shaping up to be a memorable year for genre movies.
Scare Value
Apologies for the lack of detail in this review. Once you see it for yourself, you’ll understand why so much of what happens in Companion is best experienced with as little prior knowledge as possible. Most of the theater I was in knew that Iris was a robot. The movie doesn’t explicitly state that for about 15 to 20 minutes or so. The woman in front of me was stunned, however. And the rest of us were all very jealous of her in that moment. Luckily, Companion had plenty of other surprises, and even more fun, in store for us all.
4/5
Companion Link
Buy tickets on Fandango