A Movie About a Murderous Sex Robot Explains Dating

In the new movie “Companion,” Iris seems to be the perfect girlfriend.

She looks like a 1960s paper doll, with heavy dark bangs and pink headbands that go with her pink gingham matching separates. She is endlessly supportive of her boyfriend, Josh, who appears to be very in love with her. In fact, Iris meets Josh’s every need — she even tells him the weather each morning.

That’s because Iris is a robot, “more specifically, a companion robot,” Josh admits to her, after Iris discovers that she is not a real girl. Josh hates that other people imply that she’s just a sex bot, because, he tells Iris, “You do much more than that. You’re an emotional support robot.” There is also a male character with a male robot boyfriend who spends his time cleaning and cooking elaborate meals.

Without spoiling the whole thing, the very funny, very gory movie centers on Iris’s dawning consciousness. She becomes enraged when she realizes that she is totally programmed, and can be reprogrammed, by Josh — her voice, her eye color, her intelligence level (he can adjust the setting on a 0-100 scale at any time, where 0 is an automaton and 100 is an Ivy League grad).

What the men in this movie want is a robot who is “completely docile, yours to do whatever you want with.”

And what the women — even the fembots — want is to drive away alone in a fancy convertible, the wind blowing through their hair. Iris wants her freedom, and she will get it by any means necessary.

“Companion” is obviously extreme and satirical; it’s a horror comedy. But it turns out that in the real world, human American women feel a bit like Iris does, and their view of the opposite sex in 2025 is pretty bleak.