First, it would be better for you to go into his movie cold, and we highly recommend you do, so stop reading and just go if you like clever, quirky, twisty horror movies. Still here? Fine. Writer-director Drew Hancock helms this future sci-fi horror set not too far in the future about Josh (Jack Quaid) and his (unbeknownst to her) AI “girlfriend” Iris (Sophie Thatcher), who doesn’t understand she’s a sex bot. She has memories and feelings! And makes tears! The couple are on their way to stay with Josh’s friends at a remote lake house, and this being a horror movie, people start to die. (97 min.)
Glen Holy shiznatti! This little gem is a hoot. It brings up so many interesting ideas about how humanity and technology intersect. When we anthropomorphize robots to be wholly lifelike, what’s our ethical obligation on how to treat them? If you have a glitchy printer like in Office Space, and you decide to beat and stomp it into oblivion in a field, no biggie, right? It’s your property. But instead of a printer, what if it’s an android that believes she’s human? Can you destroy her with impunity? With artificial intelligence now at our fingertips, what are our ethical obligations in its use? If you’re a rapist or pedophile and you use AI to play out your sick fantasies, is it immoral if no actual person is harmed? What if using AI fulfills a sicko enough so they don’t try to carry out their crimes in real life? Is it ethical then?
Anna Iris seems at first to be a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, but luckily, we get to see her break out of that role and become the protagonistāand badass. She’s utterly in love with Josh, who she thinks, dreams, and worries about all day. She’s convinced that his friends don’t like her, especially Kat (Megan Suri), but she agrees to a weekend away with his crew that also includes Eli (Harvey GuiliĆ©n); Eli’s beau, Patrick (Lukas Gage); and Kat’s lover, Sergey (Rupert Friend). The place they wind up is Sergey’s breathtakingly beautiful and thoroughly isolated house in the woods, 17 miles from the nearest neighbor. Things quickly go from fun to frantic after an incident between Iris and Sergey that forces the truth to come out and Iris to realize that her doting boyfriend has been playing her all along. The humans didn’t know what they’re dealing with in Iris, and soon the game of hunt and chase becomes deadly as Iris fights to keep her autonomy. It’s a wild, wicked, and very fun ride.
Glen The thing about technology is it’s only as good and bad as its programming. We learn that Iris’ parent company, Empathix, installs fail-safes in their bots so that they can’t lie, hurt a human, or hurt another bot. So what goes wrong? Human behavior, that’s what. Nothing is as it seems on the surface, and as the story unfolds, new layers of deviancy emerge. Hats off to both Quaid and Thatcher, who have the biggest character arcs. Josh seems like a nice guyānerdy, a bit of a sad sack. Iris can be controlled by a phone app, so Thatcher has to play Iris on a spectrum. Gage, too, has some acting “heavy lifting” to do as Patrick. It’s an amazing feature-length debut from Hancock.
Anna Give humans rules, and they’ll show you how to break them pretty quickly. AI is becoming more of a thinking, breathing thing in this world, so this film felt closer to reality than you might think. While a second watch won’t pack the same punch knowing the outcome, this one’s already on my rewatch list. Well done to Hancock and his cast: Companion is a winner! Ī
Arts Editor Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Split Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.