David Farnor | On 08, Nov 2025

Director: Drew Hancock
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, Rupert Friend
Certificate: 15

From Ex Machina to The Creature, cinema isn’t exactly short of stories that explore sentience and identity in an age of technology and artificial intelligence. Where things get interesting, though, is in the ethical question of power – where autonomy, authority and control collide. Companion isn’t the smartest or most original entry in that canon, but it is the funniest.

The thriller follows a group of twentysomethings who spend the weekend at a remote house in the woods. There’s Josh (an excellently immature Jack Quaid) and his girlfriend, Iris (the charismatic Sophie Thatcher), who met years ago in a supermarket meet-cute, Eli (an earnestly devoted Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend Patrick (an endearingly naive Lukas Gage), whose good looks are right out of a catalogue, and Kat (Megan Suri), who is dating the home’s owner, Sergey (an enjoyably loathsome Rupert Friend), but is more interested in his financial assets than his personality.

The group dynamics start off slightly prickly, as everyone’s relationships are far from the picture-perfect surface suggests – and then they take a turn for the dark, when we’re introduced to the concept of Empathix companions, robots rented out and programmed to be the perfect romantic partner. With everything from eye colour to intelligence and aggressiveness controlled by a tablet, they’re a horribly plausible endpoint for humans, who love nothing more than to exploit and push down others for their own superiority.

Drew Hancock’s script twists repeatedly around that concept, taking us on an increasingly unhinged ride from petulant incels to unsettling yet deserved empowerment. It doesn’t dwell on the ethics beyond the obvious abhorrence of the idea – don’t expect the depth of Black Mirror – but instead focuses on having fun. Hancock, making his directorial debut, is a confident helmer, balancing slick visuals with disarmingly bright colours to create a garish, larger-than-life reality – then punctures it with a visceral stab of chaos.

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