Companion – Review

This twisting, turning horror-sci-fi romp boasts a darkly playful tone and sharp gender politics,

★★★★☆

This review contains first-act spoilers.

There’s a long-running “sexbots gone wild” subgenre of sci-fi, from Metropolis (1927) to Ex Machina (2014). To that list we can now add Drew Hancock’s Companion. Like those films – and other robot wife tales, from The Stepford Wives (1975) to Her (2013) – Companion taps into anxieties about control, autonomy, and gendered expectations, but it does so with an energetic playfulness that keeps its bleak themes from becoming overwhelming.

This slick, darkly funny sci-fi horror swoops through the complexities of relationships, power dynamics, and artificial intelligences gone rogue. Originally, Barbarian filmmaker Zach Cregger was set to direct, before he stepped back to produce, shifting his focus to his upcoming film Weapons. No matter – writer Hancock steps up to direct a stylish, unpredictable debut that balances brutal horror with witty dialogue and sharp social commentary, marking him as a filmmaker to watch.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) join friends at a secluded “rural cabin” (actually an extensive modernist delightful) for a weekend getaway. Their trip takes a nightmarish turn when Iris responds to an incipient sexual assault from the cabin owner by stabbing him to death – a horrific development that only escalates when Josh tells Iris that she is in fact his “emotional support robot,” – “I don’t like to use the word fuckbot” he assures her – and she will now have to be shut down.

Hancock’s script expertly layers in suspense, planting clues early on that take on deeper meaning as the film unfolds. The twists come fast, but they never feel cheap – each reveal builds on the film’s core themes of control, manipulation, dependency, and resistance.

Thatcher shines as Iris, delivering a performance that shifts from naïve charm to unsettling intensity. Fresh off her role in The Heretic, she brings a layered complexity to the character, making her both sympathetic and chilling as the story progresses. Jack Quaid, meanwhile, continues to prove his versatility, playing a role that requires him to toggle between affable charm and mounting desperation. Lukas Gage is also excellent in a smaller role, with a performance that’s deceptively lighthearted at first, only to reveal unexpected depth as the film peels back its layers.

Visually, Companion is a striking mix of the eerily sterile and the brutally visceral. The film’s production design echoes the tech-bro modernism of Ex Machina’s hideaway compound while the cinematography plays with perspective and framing in a way that keeps the audience off-balance, reinforcing the film’s shifting power dynamics.

Mixing horror and comedy is always a challenge, but Hancock and his cast pull it off superbly. The film’s humor never undercuts its horror, and its violence never feels gratuitous. Instead, the playfulness adds to the tension—moments of levity lull the audience into a false sense of security before yanking the rug out from under them.

Where Companion really stands out is in its gender politics. Like Ex Machina, it interrogates the power dynamics between self-serving men and artificial women, but refuses to settle into familiar victim narratives. The film is deeply interested in agency—who gets to wield it, who seeks to suppress it, and what happens when it’s reclaimed. By the final act, it’s clear that Companion is using sci-fi and horror tropes to say something pointed about relationships, control, and the consequences of underestimating the oppressed.

While it may not reinvent the wheel, let alone the robot, Companion is a hugely entertaining addition to the modern popcorn horror landscape. Its twisty (and twisted) energy keeps audiences on edge, its cast delivers some of their best work, and its thematic undercurrents linger after the credits roll. It’s violent, funny, smart, and above all, a hell of a good time – with more surprises than Apple’s Terms and Conditions. Recommended!

Companion is in UK cinemas from 31 January.