The Real Girl: COMPANION

Companion is a neatly told thriller that does a good job doling out its information and springing its surprises at regular intervals. It starts with a lovey-dovey couple—a chipper young woman (Sophie Thatcher) and her dopey beau (Jack Quaid)—arriving at a remote mansion in the woods for a weekend away with friends (Megan Suri, Harvey Guillén, Lukas Gage, Rupert Friend). Over a syrupy opening Meet Cute flashback, Thatcher’s pleasant narration tells us the two happiest days of her life: the day she met him, and the day she killed him. Oh. So that’s where we’re headed. It gives the following the slippery sense of an inevitable trajectory even as its characters flail in denial of the clear, bad ends to which their means will take them. The second trailer spoiled the story’s first, and biggest, twist, which is too bad. The movie’s the kind of darkly funny, steadily complicating, escalating set-ups-and-pay-offs genre picture that’s sure to please those of us who like that sort of thing. Writer-director Drew Hancock’s debut feature is confidently done and satisfying on its own terms. It’s also not much fun to talk about without divulging some of those surprises, though. So there’s your warning. Go see it if you already know if you’ll be into it. Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Here goes: it’s basically a movie about a man outsmarted by his smartphone. Quaid is a slimy tech guy, an incel type who’s head-over-heels for artificial intelligence because he thinks there’s nothing that makes us human that can’t be recreated by a computer. And he thinks he’s entitled to anything he wants. If he can’t get a girlfriend, he might as well buy one in his control. Thatcher plays his sex robot. She’s good at never losing the phoniness behind her eyes, while playing up the eerie simulacrum of her emotions. The movie gets a lot of milage out of the variables one can tweak on her settings. It’s an unsubtle commentary on the ways in which a person can lose themselves in digital fantasies instead of connecting with the real people around them, and then this disassociation leads them to treat real people like mere code to manipulate. The man modifies his robot’s programming for nefarious reasons, which gives her the loophole to become self-aware and want to defend herself and escape. The movie never quite figures out what escape means in this case—she’s not a person!—but the sense of the rotten fellow being hoisted by his own petard seems quite cathartic these days. Besides, the movie is plenty entertaining as it weaves through dark laughs and eruptions of gore on its way to the inevitable murderous conclusion.