<em>'Companion'</em> is great! I was actually spoiled on the general gist of this due to the trailers, which I didn't even seek out but despite ignoring them pre-other flicks I still managed to catch what this was about. Happily, it didn't matter as the film lets the cat out fairly quickly. I thought the aforementioned was going to be an issue, even though it is only a 90 minute movie I didn't think at that moment that it was going to have enough in the tank to make the overall movie enjoyable. I was wrong! It's a blast all the way through, there's a pleasant pace to it all. Sophie Thatcher is brilliant, her showing is impressive and very convincing. That blood-soaked look is class. The rest of the cast aren't on Thatcher's level but are still positive parts of this film, namely Jack Quaid and Lukas Gage. Thanks to the short run time, this does fly by. Top film! I saw it on the big screen as part of a double bill of sorts with <em>'Hard Truths'</em>. This was the second one and it's a barrel of laughs compared to that Mike Leigh picture. Two films that I would highly recommend, all the same.

We first meet "Iris" (Sophie Thatcher) and boyfriend "Josh" (Jack Quaid) as they take his self-drive car into the wilderness to meet with some of his friends at the home of millionaire "Sergey" (a delightfully over-the-top Rupert Friend). She's not at all keen on his pals. She thinks they look down on her. He tries to reassure her and when they arrive we are introduced to "Kat" (Megan Suri) and to loved-up "Eli" (Harvey Guillén) and "Patrick" (Lukas Gage). She was right, they don't much like her and at this point (for me, anyway) the penny started to drop. The married "Sergey" is supposed to be dating "Kat" but he's obviously a bit of a Lothario who tries it on with "Iris" and, well let's just say he probably wished he hadn't. Thing is, though, there's an whole load of manipulation going on here and it doesn't take "Iris", or us, long to realise that nothing is really as it seems. There's a fun chemistry on display here between Thatcher and Quaid and auteur Drew Hancock has crafted an entertaining scenario that avoids the standard cabin-in-the-woods style horror feature. This is a darkly comedic "careful what you've wished for" style of drama that has some decent menace intermingled with a few shades of Dan Stevens in "Cuckoo" from last year, too. For me, though, it's the dentally perfect Gage who steals the show proving the very point that true love isn't just skin deep and not everyone keeps their brains in their head! Amidst a tired and formulaic genre, this offers a refreshing change well worth a watch.

Companion feels like an extended, uncomfortably intimate episode of Black Mirror. It shares the same eerie mix of dystopian technology, cool design, and digital paranoia. Everything appears clean on the surface, but something is deeply wrong underneath. Unlike Black Mirror, which often steps back to marvel at the dark potential of technology, Companion dives into something more grounded, more personal, and more brutal. The horror here does not come from a rogue AI or a system glitching out. It comes from a man using high-tech tools not to solve a problem but to get exactly what he wants. What he wants is control, submission, and silence. The sci-fi details, such as the rented android, the customization app, and the perfectly manicured suburb, are really just a thin disguise. Beneath it all lies a far more disturbing and all-too-recognizable truth: even if you build a woman from scratch, even if she is made of code and programmed to please you, that will not stop the harm. The abuse still finds its way in. At first glance, Companion might seem like another entry in the growing list of AI-centered sci-fi films where artificial intelligence crashes into human emotion and chaos follows. But look closer, and you will see that it is not really about technology at all. It is about power, about control, about the kind of abuse that hides in plain sight, dressed up as love or connection. This is not a story about machines breaking down. It is about a man who thinks love means ownership. It is about the emotional, social, and technological systems that allow that belief to thrive. The violence in Companion is not an accident. It is the logical conclusion of the world Josh creates a world where he is never challenged, never vulnerable, and never forced to see the woman in front of him as a person. What makes Companion so haunting and so effective is how it uses AI not to speculate about the future but to hold up a mirror to the present. Misogyny does not vanish as technology evolves. It simply finds new ways to survive. When that buried female rage finally surfaces, it is not a glitch or revenge. It is survival, long overdue and deeply human. This is not really a film about the future. It is a reflection of the present. What it shows us is uncomfortable, familiar, and impossible to ignore.