Editor’s Note: This story includes mention of sexual assault. Resources are available here.
SPOILER ALERT: This column contains potential spoilers about “Companion.”
In her influential 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” Susan Sontag defined the camp style in terms of “its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” It’s a particular aesthetic sensibility, not rooted in any one specific genre or medium. It’s difficult to describe in words, it’s really the sort of phenomenon where you know it when you see it.
It might be most useful, then, to simply list films that carry a camp sensibility: think films like “Barbarella,” “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Pink Flamingos.”
Sontag then draws a clear — and important — line between what she called “naïve,” or “pure,” camp and “deliberate” camp. Naïve camp, she said, is never aware of its own campiness; on the other hand, that camp which is aware of the fact it’s camp is usually less satisfying because of it.
“The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious,” she wrote.
With this in mind, “Companion,” directed by Drew Hancock and starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, becomes a modern take on the exploitation film that is entirely aware of its own campiness. This doesn’t necessarily make it bad, per se, but it is a much less satisfying result than if it had taken itself a bit more seriously. As much as it wants to be, “Companion” can never be a cult-classic B-horror because it’s never earnest enough to be one. Really more a comedy at times than a horror, the film is ironic, tongue-in-cheek, it elbows the audience and winks and says, “We know you know this is ridiculous.”
And it’s true, the concept is ridiculous — which is okay! We follow a couple, Iris and Josh (Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid, respectively), on a weekend getaway to a lake house in the woods with their friends. Things go awry, however, and they end up turning against each other.
Now, if you’ll permit me a brief aside, I’d like to say that, if you’re particularly intent on avoiding anything that might be construed as a spoiler, the above synopsis is all you need to know about “Companion.” Don’t watch the trailers or engage with any further discourse, it’s a film where a twist acts as the main premise. It’s a lot like “Fresh,” the 2022 film from Mimi Cave, in that regard.
Nevertheless, for the sake of writing a coherent and legible column about the film, I will be engaging with that twist. And thus, my plot summary continues. It’s revealed, early in the film, that Iris is a “companion robot.” That is, she’s a robot specifically created to act as a loving girlfriend to Josh, who ordered her in the mail and tailored her to his specific liking. He’s able to control her and modify her whenever he wants, everything from her eye color to her intelligence level. In other words, Iris is not an autonomous being: she has no self-control or free will in the slightest.
The turning-point in “Companion,” and the moment it’s revealed that Iris is a robot, comes when Sergey (Rupert Friend), a wealthy Russian who owns the lake house our team of characters are residing in, attempts to rape her. From this moment on, it essentially cements itself within a sub-genre of the revenge film, a well-established exploitation genre that includes such projects as “I Spit on Your Grave” and “Ms. 45.” Unfortunately, the film’s total inability to take itself seriously detracts from these very serious themes.
That isn’t to say a film like this can’t be enjoyable to watch, it absolutely can be. One of the hallmarks of the exploitation genre is its entertainment value or its campiness while still dealing with serious themes and often extreme violence. The problem, then, with “Companion” isn’t the fact it's a fun film but the fact it’s an ironic film. It becomes almost self-deprecating, it lacks any semblance of confidence in its own inherent absurdity.
Drew Hancock seems like a perfectly competent director and somebody with genuinely good intentions. The fact he directed a film that even attempts to impart the messages this one attempts to is admirable. But it’s easy to wonder what “Companion” would’ve been like had the director been a woman.
I’m thinking now specifically of “Love Lies Bleeding,” another recent take on the feminist exploitation genre directed by Rose Glass. Though a fun, and even funny, film in its own right, it’s totally sincere in its approach. Importantly too, “Love Lies Bleeding” is a film entirely free of the male gaze, something that “Companion” can’t also say.
There are many shots of Iris in the shower, close-ups of her lips and her body and, at one point, even her feet. While these shots aren’t necessarily sexual within the context of the film, the fact of the film’s male director, who also wrote the script, means they can’t be divorced from a wider social and historical patriarchal context. The male gaze is an inherent part of the picture precisely because of it having a male director.
“Companion” is a flawed film that I wanted to love a lot more than I did. It’s fun, I had a good time watching it. But, all things considered, I just can’t find it in me to praise it much because I know it could’ve been so much more.
A list of resources is available here if you or someone you know has experienced sexual harassment or abuse.
