Companion Movie Review; Spoilers Galore

This review is an absolute spoiler of this intense AI film from January this year (2025); a disclaimer if you want to watch the movie 🤗

I took a calculated risk and watched this movie when I found my sister watching it and just sat. And I didn't regret that one bit, because although the movie started on a relevantly slow and lovey dovey mood, the tempo changed considerably in a brief enough period to keep me hooked throughout. Riveting is a nice word to add here...

My Friend Has a Lakeside Estate 😃

The movie begins with a narration by Iris (Sophie Thatcher). She runs into Josh (Jack Quaid) at the supermarket and falls deeply in love with him on the spot. That picture-perfect, cute, puppy love type of thing that we can't get enough of (Allegedly). It's all love and brightness with the normalcies of the average relationship for a while. One day, they take a trip to a friend's house by the lake, who lets them know that he doesn't own the lake, just the land all around it. 😮‍💨

Their first night is amazing, apart from Josh suddenly becoming very rude. He rolls over and turns the light off after they make love, leaving her chatting happily to herself about their future together. She would have carried on as well if he didn't abruptly tell her to go to sleep, at which point she immediately fell silent. I honestly thought he was just being a jackass and didn't think that maybe he was giving her a command. A "command" as in how you'd do to a computer. I didn't read the movie summary 😓

As everyone settles in and gets into a party mood, the really rich friend (he doesn't last long enough to warrant naming him but he's called Sergey) tries to force himself on Iris at a time when they're secluded at the lake's shore. Just before this, she was fidgeting with a pocket knife that she just discovered in her pocket before their host joins them. I'm a little ashamed that I missed the subtle foreshadowing here. Because the knife was also in Iris' suitcase as she unpacked when they got to the lake house.

My Girl Is Agile With the Pocket Knife

There's a brief tussle after which the rich friend gets pissed and as the fight becomes serious, Iris stabs him in the neck and he's out of commission (see, I told you). Stunned and covered in blood, she runs back to Josh and their friends.

She's trying to explain to him that she did what she did because she just loves Josh so much that she couldn't stand the thought of someone else touching her and not him. He tells her to go to sleep and her eyes turn white and she's deathly quiet, frozen in that moment.

Jackasses

Jackasses All Around

I'm not going to lie, I got a little angry at some points of this movie. Like when Iris runs away from the house with Josh's phone and discovers that he had her intelligence at 40%. She remedies that quick and turns the intelligence all the way up. And I think it serves him right; whatever's coming his way. They try to find her but she gives them a run and heads back to Josh's car. Those guys I've been talking to you about, they're the absolute worst for real.

What Could Go Wrong?

Everything, that's what. Iris gets to the car but just after she has to shoot Eli as he catches up to her and attempts to shoot her himself. Her voice can't start the car, so she adjusts it on Josh's phone to match his and it turns on, driving off just as he's almost broken the passenger's side window. She runs over his foot in the process, and as she goes away, he goes back to the house and figures out that he can just report his car as stolen. He then gets on a call with Iris and tries to trick her into going back to the lake house but she instead breaks up with him (over the phone 😭)

He heads back to where Patrick is sitting with Eli in his arms; grief struck like no one's business. He tries to convince Patrick to go after Iris but he won't have it, so Josh uses Eli's thumb to reset him and increase his aggression levels to 100%.

Again, What Could Go Wrong?

Patrick finds Iris and gets the job done with minimal qualms and zero excuses, bringing home not just Iris, but a state trooper who asked too many questions as a trophy, both in the boot of the officer's car. Kat gets sick of all the drama and tries to leave, and when self-confessed good guy Josh tells Patrick to stop her, he immediately does. By driving a knife deep into her back.

We're taken to Iris who's now clean and set up for dinner with her hands and feet bound. She lets him know that he's straight garbage and this doesn't sit well with him and he turns her intelligence down to zero because he's done arguing with logic. He does a test and asks her to hold out her hand over a candle till it catches on fire. He's on a phone call for a while and then he asks Patrick to put her out, and then he tells her to pick up a gun from the table and shoot herself. She hesitates and says no, but then her inability to disobey pushes her to do it.

As she pulls the trigger, she quietly whispers "no." She falls to the floor with the gun still in her hand, and the next scene is the crew from the companion bot company who are getting lies by the earful from Josh about what transpired. He says that she got jealous of Kat and had a tiff with Rich Guy and basically pins the murders on her, and then as the team's leaving, Josh is stunned to know that the bot's hard drive is not in the head as he'd assumed, but in the abdomen.

They wheel Iris out and Josh sends Patrick to retrieve Iris's body yet again, and that's when one of the guys recognizes Patrick to be one of their bots. It's too late as he pulls out a gun and shoots he first guy, barely missing the second one who runs out of the truck, leaving iris plugged in and rebooting. She restarts just in time to save the second guy who she finds cornered by Patrick.

She tries to talk to Patrick and tells him that Josh is only using him, and that his true love is actually dead. After some recollection and piecing pieces together, Patrick realizes that this is the truth and offs himself with a dramatic tazer to the mouth.

Finally, Someone Let My Girl Out of Her Cage 😫🙏🏽

Iris walks back into the house to a startled Josh who was expecting Patrick. She has a gun but follows the nonsense trope of conversating instead of obliterating. It's just as well that she did though, because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten this gem: "...you set me free, Josh. And all it took was a bullet to the head" 🗣️

She also lets Josh know that the techie who'd come to pick her had granted her, on her request, free will. Like wow, girl, I'm so happy for her!!! Talk about self actualization and a prize-worthy journey of character development. Iris is looking like goals rn, I won't lie 😅 Okay fangirling done...

There's a brief tussle for the gun when things come to a head, and it's do or die now for real. Iris finds the automatic wine opener that had made a few appearances earlier in the film, telling Josh to go to sleep just as she stabs him in the side of the head with it and turns it on. The narration at the start of the movie? Hella foreshadowing because she said that she experienced brief moments of transcendent clarity on the day she met Josh, and again on the day she killed him. Generally, she enjoyed it all and would rate it 5 stars out of 5. Fan art alert!!!

Nice, full, circle. 'Nuf said.