"Like Alex Garland's 'Ex Machina' and Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin', 'Companion' uses a juicy science-fiction premise – in this case, if we could hire robotic lovers, how might we treat them? – as the pretext for a dark parable about male manipulation and coercion of women," said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph.
Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is a "pretty, softly spoken" robot who has been programmed to provide companionship for her "midwit" boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). Together, they head off to spend a weekend with friends at a remote lake house owned by a Russian tycoon (Rupert Friend), where Iris goes violently rogue. There is a "wonderful delicacy to Thatcher's performance, as the actress expertly toggles between uncanny and natural from moment to moment", and the film is a treat – "an unabashed whoop-out-loud romp: one of those films in which horrible things happen constantly to horrible people, as the moral arc of the universe bends itself around to kick the backsides of everyone involved".
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