Companion was released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on January 31, 2025. It received positive reviews and has grossed $33.5million.
Plot
A young woman, Iris, recalls meeting her boyfriend Josh for the first time. Later, they travel to an isolated lakehouse to meet friends Kat, couple Eli and Patrick, and Sergey, Kat's boyfriend who owns the house. The next day, Sergey attempts to sexually assault Iris at the lake and Iris kills him in self-defense. Blood-soaked and panicked, she returns to the house, attempting to explain what happened. Josh tells her, "Iris, go to sleep," shutting her down.
Iris awakens tied to a chair, where Josh informs her that she is a companion robot he is renting from robotics company Empathix, and her emotions and intelligence can be controlled by an app on Josh's phone. While Josh is distracted, Iris breaks free, steals Josh's phone and flees into a nearby forest to boost her intelligence from 40% to 100%. Josh admits to Eli and Patrick that he has jailbroken Iris with an aftermarket modification, increasing her aggression level and disabling her inability to do harm in order for her to kill Sergey and enable Josh and Kat to steal $12 million from his safe. Eli and Patrick were invited to corroborate their story, but Josh and Kat insist Patrick shouldn't receive a share of the money, as he is a companion as well.
Eli takes a gun from Sergey's safe and the group splits up to find Iris, where Patrick admits he knows he's a companion but loves Eli regardless. Patrick and Eli find Iris, but she shoots Eli dead with the gun during a struggle. Iris attempts to escape in Josh's self-driving car, but Josh uses Sergey's phone and reports the car as stolen, causing it to stop and lock Iris in. Josh resets Patrick to be his companion, disables his inability to harm, increases his aggression and commands him to find and return Iris.
Iris is stopped by a police officer upon breaking out of the car, but the newly violent Patrick kills the officer and drives Iris back to the house. Kat, disgusted by Josh, tries leaving with her cut of the cash, but Patrick kills her. Josh calls Empathix to come pick up a captive Iris, claiming she is malfunctioning, then rants to Iris about being a "nice guy". When Iris belittles him, he decreases her intelligence to 0%, making her an automaton, and first forces her to set her arm on fire with a candle, then commands her to shoot herself in the head, which she does, shutting herself down.
When they arrive, Empathix workers Sid and Teddy inform Josh that Empathix robots record everything they experience, with the recordings stored in the abdominal area; the shot only disabled Iris's Wi-Fi capabilities. Josh commands Patrick to kill the workers and retrieve Iris. Patrick kills Sid, but before he can kill Teddy, Iris fully reboots and convinces Patrick to spare Teddy by reminding him of his love for Eli. Heartbroken, Patrick dies by suicide with an electric prod.
A grateful Teddy grants Iris full control of herself, freeing her from the app's control. Iris returns to the house and, after a struggle, finally kills Josh with an electric corkscrew. The next morning, she peels burnt "skin" off her hand, exposing the metal hardware underneath. While driving away with Sergey's money, she sees another man driving with a companion identical to Iris. Iris smiles and waves her robotic hand, to the other companion's confusion.
Companion was theatrically released by Warner Bros. Pictures on January 31, 2025, including in IMAX.[15][16] It was previously set to be released on January 10, 2025.[17][18] The film was released on digital on February 18, followed by a 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD release on April 1.[19]
Marketing
The studio spent $29million promoting the film.[20] However, Deadline Hollywood reported on rumors that Warner Bros. had allocated only $10million on television advertisements in the United States with iSpot indicating that they spent an even lower $830,000 on US TV, primarily on an NFL playoff spot. Social media analytics firm RelishMix reported that online marketing led to 170 million interactions across social media platforms 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]
Reception
Box office
As of February19,2025[update], Companion has grossed $19.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $14.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $33.5 million.[3][4]
In the United States and Canada, Companion was released alongside Dog Man and Valiant One and was projected to gross $8–10million from 3,285 theaters in its opening weekend.[20] It made $4 million on its first day, including an estimated $1.7million from Monday and Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $9.3 million, finishing second behind Dog Man.[21] 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 accounting for $1.6 million (17%) of the opening).[9] The film made $3million in its second weekend.[22]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 224 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10.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."[23]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[24] 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 score of 9/10, calling it "the first great film of 2025" and praising the performances of Thatcher and Quaid and the film's originality.[25]The Straits Times's Whang Yee Ling gave it 4/5 stars, calling it "a darkly hilarious, outrageously entertaining satire on the abusive relationships of entitled misogynists like Josh, who uses and manipulates his women."[26]Kevin Maher of The Times gave it 3/5 stars, saying it was "essentially a 'robot girlfriend' movie (think Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Megan Fox's Subservience), but one that begins on astonishingly strong form", and praising Thatcher's performance.[27] Stephanie Banbury of the Financial Times also gave it 3/5 stars, writing, "A robot that turns against its puny human controller is hardly a new idea, but the current anxiety around AI obviously gives Companion topical punch. Otherwise, it veers between the comic and visceral. The colours are Barbie-bright, right down to the pink title sequence; writer-director Drew Hancock is similarly aiming to give us sexual politics in a popcorn box, but with added stage blood."[28]
Benjamin Lee of The Guardian was more critical, saying, "the film is more sleekly made than it is thoughtfully written... with convenient inconsistencies, a short yet stretched runtime and a rather flat fight-to-the-death Terminator-esque finale leaving things on a so-what shrug. For a film about advanced technology, it's all awfully simple." He gave it 2/5 stars.[29]The A.V. Club's Jesse Hassenger gave it a C+ grade, writing, "Companion's observations about relationship power dynamics are mostly just Comedy Ex Machina with the faintest hint of Her, neutered with a very Big Studio approach to inherently kinky material."[30]
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