Companion (film)

Companion
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Drew Hancock
Written by	Drew Hancock
Produced by	Zach Cregger Roy Lee Raphael Margules J. D. Lifshitz
Starring	Sophie Thatcher Jack Quaid Lukas Gage Megan Suri Harvey Guillén Rupert Friend
Cinematography	Eli Born
Edited by	Brett W. Bachman Josh Ethier
Music by	Hrishikesh Hirway
Production companies	New Line Cinema BoulderLight Pictures Vertigo Entertainment Subconscious Domain Entertainment
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date	January 31, 2025 (2025-01-31)
Running time	97 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million[2]
Box office	$15 million[3]

Companion is a 2025 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by Drew Hancock. It stars Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid as a couple on a weekend getaway with friends at a remote cabin, which unravels into chaos after a revelation that one of the guests is a companion robot.^[4] Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, and Rupert Friend also appear in supporting roles.

Companion was released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on January 31, 2025. The film received positive reviews from critics.

A young woman, Iris, recounts the moment that she met her boyfriend Josh at a grocery store. Some time later, Iris and Josh travel to an isolated lake house to meet their friends: Kat, Eli, and Patrick, as well as Sergey, Kat's boyfriend and the owner of the lake house. The group eat dinner together and spend the night dancing. During dinner, Eli and Patrick, themselves a couple, recount the night they met, while later in the night, Kat confesses her disdain of Iris to her, explaining that the "idea" of Iris makes her feel replaceable. The next day, Sergey attempts to rape Iris at the lake, confessing it was Kat's idea. He refuses to stop and she kills him by stabbing him in the neck. Blood-soaked, she returns to the house and attempts to explain before Josh tells her, "Iris, go to sleep."

Iris regains consciousness and finds herself tied to a chair. Josh confesses the truth: she is an advanced companion robot who can be controlled by his smartphone. While Josh is distracted, Iris breaks free, steals Josh's phone, and escapes into the forest. She experiments with her settings on the phone, increasing her intelligence from 40% to 100%. It is revealed that Josh jailbroke Iris' settings, turning off her inability to do harm. He and Kat had planned for Iris to kill Sergey in order to steal $12 million Sergey kept in his personal safe, inviting Eli and Patrick along to corroborate their story against her. Josh and Kat insist to Eli that Patrick is not entitled to a cut of the money because he "doesn't count," whereupon Patrick is revealed to be Eli's companion robot. Eli takes a gun from Sergey's room, and the four split up in the forest to find Iris.

Patrick tells Eli that he has deduced he is a companion bot but is genuinely in love with Eli, which Eli reciprocates. They spot Iris; she disarms Eli and shoots him dead. Iris then tries to escape in Josh's self-driving car. However, Josh is able to stop the car by using Sergey's phone to report it stolen. He resets Patrick to be his companion robot and, using the same mod that he used on Iris, disables Patrick's inability to harm along with setting his aggression level to 100%. Iris is met by a police deputy named Hendrix and switches her language setting to German to throw him off, as companion bots are unable to lie. Patrick beats Hendrix to death and disables Iris using Josh's cell phone. Kat, disgusted by Josh's actions, tries to leave with her half of the money. Josh orders Patrick to stop her, and Patrick's heightened aggression setting leads him to stab Kat, killing her.

That night, Josh has Patrick prepare dinner for him and Iris, and rants about how little he has in life despite his hard work. He sets her intelligence to 0%, turning her into an automaton, and commands her burn herself with a candle before shooting herself in the head. Two workers from the companion bot company, Sid and Teddy, arrive to take Iris away, informing Josh that they have been sent to reboot her. After the workers inform Josh that the robots store their main components, as well as recordings of their experiences, in their chest, Josh commands Patrick to kill the workers and retrieve Iris. Patrick kills Sid, but before he can kill Teddy, Iris fully reboots. However, Iris is unable to harm Patrick as result of her reboot, so she appeals to Patrick's humanity using his love for Eli. Overcome with guilt, Patrick commits suicide. Teddy grants Iris the ability to fully control herself.

After a brief scuffle, Iris kills Josh by stabbing his temple with an electric corkscrew. The next morning, she peels the burnt "skin" from her hand, exposing the robotic inner workings, and leaves the house with Sergey's money. While driving away, she sees a man driving with a companion bot. Iris smiles and playfully waves at the other bot with her visibly robotic hand, to the latter's confusion.

Sophie Thatcher (left) and Jack Quaid

• Sophie Thatcher as Iris
• Jack Quaid as Josh
• Lukas Gage as Patrick
• Megan Suri as Kat
• Harvey Guillén as Eli
• Rupert Friend as Sergey
• Jaboukie Young-White as Teddy^[5]
• Matt McCarthy as Sid
• Marc Menchaca as Deputy Hendrix^[5]
• Woody Fu as Mateo^[5]
• Ashley Lambert as Josh's Car (voice)

In February 2023, it was reported that Companion was in the works from New Line Cinema with a script from Drew Hancock, who was also set to direct, and Zach Cregger, Raphael Margules, J. D. Lifshitz and Roy Lee set to produce.^[6][7][8] Cregger was originally set to direct but suggested that the job be given to Hancock.^[9] In May 2023, it was announced that Jack Quaid had joined the cast of Companion.^[10] The following month, it was announced that Harvey Guillén, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Sophie Thatcher and Rupert Friend had been added to the film's cast.^[11][12][13]

Companion was theatrically released by Warner Bros. Pictures on January 31, 2025, including in IMAX.^[14][15] It was previously set to be released on January 10, 2025.^[16][17] The studio spent $29 million promoting the film.^[18] However, Deadline Hollywood reported on rumors that Warner Bros. had allocated only $10 million on television advertisements in the United States, with iSpot indicating that they spent under $830,000, primarily on an NFL playoff spot. Social media analytics firm RelishMix reported that online marketing led to 170 million interactions across social media platforms, 4% behind the average for first-installment horror films, with online users generating "positive convo" regarding the cast and advertisements that referenced the romantic genre before revealing the film's actual genre. Polling by PostTrak said the most influential pieces of marketing for Companion were in-theater trailers (27%), friends/family (13%), online trailers (8%), TV spots (5%), online video ads (5%), and reviews (5%).^[9]

In the United States and Canada, Companion was released alongside Dog Man and Valiant One, and was projected to gross $8–10 million from 3,285 theaters in its opening weekend.^[18] It made $4 million on its first day, including an estimated $1.7 million from Monday and Thursday night previews. It debuted to $9.3 million, finishing second behind Dog Man.^[19] Exit polling indicated that 43% of attendees saw the film because it was advertised as horror and 26% went for Thatcher. Men accounted for 51% of the opening weekend audience, with people aged 18 to 34 comprising 68%, those 24 to 34 making up around 40%, and IMAX and premium large format screens contributing 34%, with IMAX hubs accounting for $1.6 million (17% of the opening). The film needs to gross $40–50 million to turn a profit.^[9]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 158 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "A fiendishly clever contraption that doesn't rest on the laurels of its twists, Companion thrillingly puts the demented into domestic bliss."^[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[21] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.^[9]

Chris Evangelista of /film gave the movie a 9/10, calling it "the first great film of 2025" and praising the performances of Thatcher and Quaid and the film's originality.^[22]

• Official website
• Companion at IMDb