What does the seclusion of weekend getaways and informal get-togethers typically entail for the horror and suspense genres? Idyllic intimacy yielding to cabin fever, perhaps? Madness seeping through the façade of congeniality? Maybe it is also when nothing is what it at all seems? I can think of three recent companion pieces to Companion that fit this mold without sharing all its sci-fi elements. Coherence, with its elaborate tesseract recursive loop, comes to mind. The Invitation, whose events unfold in one horrific evening among a dozen adults gathered over dinner, is a good shout. And how about Don’t Worry Darling, with its zealously guarded charade?
Companion crosses into similar territory while keeping its own and, for stretches, this boded well for the film’s hold over the imagination. The appeal of science fiction is when it holds human relationships with robots and artificial intelligence as a mirror for xenophobia and classism. Companion avoids delving into this treatment—portraying robots as a tool rather than independent, sentient entities—and presents otherness within a satirical framework. Although the events are depicted in an engaging—sometimes convincing—fashion, the film lacks a balance between comedy and horror, between motive and means. The result is, ultimately, an engaging work that hardly transcends stories about insurance fraud.
The film also declares its intention of upending convention immediately when it opens with Iris (Thatcher) recalling the two defining moments of her existence. The day she met her boyfriend Josh (Quaid) and the day they parted ways. It is not so much a spoiler, knowing narratives that start at the end and revisit instigating events are a familiar form. Here, it is the shock, instead, being retraced, as the film begins with the revelation. The true revelation, however, is much subtler than the plot point Iris reveals in her opening voice-over monologue. Is she a ruthless anti-heroine? This early bread crumb is as tantalizing as Thatcher’s sultry exasperations and exposition delivery.
Once their smarmy first encounter is past us, the camera switches to a clearer lens and crisper film rate indicating the mundaneness of the present. This is further echoed by the lackluster sex the couple have upon arriving at the destination, a secluded lakeside mansion. Yes, it involves vigorous thrusting but also concludes with the man collapsing beside an indifferent recipient. Kudos for foreshadowing the overall quality from this anticlimactic romp, as these comedic beats arrive with metronomic precision, alternate between abrupt bloodshed, and result in a manufactured humor that loses all effect at the first reiteration.
The following morning mayhem ensues, the shady (mustachoid and foreign-accented) host is wasted for attempting rape on a robot, and the whole trip switches from a pretense for date-rape to a pretext for an elaborate heist. Again with the xenophobia? At one fell swoop, the malicious gives way to the familiar, and that age-old motive; a ticket out of poverty. It is the noir nucleus at its core, delivered under the guise of a cyber thriller. Remember, these robots can be jail-broken, their warranties voided, with all proprietary oversight delayed in service of prolonging the bloodletting. We are not even treated to how these machines’ hygienic upkeep works between rentals, if the kibbles and bits are sound proofed or whir audibly, et cetera. Would such tampering lead to a bedroom malfunction, and death by a thousand strokes?User, beware of hip thrusting ad infinitum.
But with no sufficient background beyond “having a rental companion because the real thing is out of the end user’s league,” I turn my attention to the pertinent message of the film (a rare thing working in its favor, in fairness to the piece). Which leads to what Companion got right. Aside from the horror of jail-broken robots with customizable temperaments, mostly mood and tone. The beauty of the setting is as surreal as out-of -place the hodge podge of characters inhabiting it are; namely, the guests who are intended to approximate a regular Joe. Outside, the woods stretch as far as the eyes can see. Hills undulate and obscure the landscape and lend a element of imposing confinement. This the type of privacy is not accessible to just any kind of wealth.
And what of the amount of wealth required to own a companion robot? With next to nothing in terms of background or motives, we are expected to accept the machines’ ubiquitous utility, ramifications be damned. Same for social acceptability. Unless one is to project Gen Z’s apathy as ‘just because,’ which aligns the film with established zeitgeist. I suppose there is an irony in Josh’s inadequacies, stepping into the unattainable and seeking a semblance of agency over his lot in life here of all places. If only he could find the right thrust first.
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