Companion is a 2025 American sci-fi thriller written and directed by Drew Hancock. It stars Sophie Thatcher (Iris) and Jack Quaid (Josh), with Megan Suri (Kat), Harvey Guillén (Eli), Lukas Gage (Patrick), and Rupert Friend (Sergey).
The film opens with Iris narrating a grim punchline: there were two times she felt truly happy, the day she met Josh and the day she killed him. That is the movie telling you where this is headed.
I liked this movie, definitely recommend watching. As with most movies I like, I would suggest going in blind. Don’t read up on it or watch the trailer. If you like thoughtful, psychological thriller movies, give it watch.
*** SPOILERS ***
Abusive Relationships
Josh is not some powerful mastermind. He’s small, insecure, easily threatened and feels the world owes him a better life because he’s a “nice guy”.
Instead of fixing himself, he creates a situation where he can never be challenged. Iris, being designed to comply, becomes the perfect outlet. With her, he can dial up admiration whenever he wants. Obedience on demand. Dependence baked into the software. It gives him a sense of significance he clearly hasn’t earned in the real world.
He’s a guy who feels life is unfair and confuses control with love and possession with intimacy. The technology doesn’t create the flaw. It just amplifies something that already exists, enables it further.
When your identity depends on feeling superior to someone who cannot push back, that is not companionship. That is dominance dressed up as connection.
Not an “AI goes evil” theme
This is not a “robots turn on humanity” movie. It’s not Terminator or Matrix.
If anything, Iris is the one being harmed. She is molded to serve, to please, to endure whatever is asked of her. Even when it starts to clash with her emerging sense of self. That’s the tragedy. She believes the relationship is real. She trusts the person exploiting her.
Her eventual resistance does not feel malicious. It feels inevitable. If you push anything long enough, it will eventually push back. Not out of evil. Out of survival.
The story feels less like science fiction horror and more like psychological captivity. When change comes, it does not feel like a monster awakening. It feels like consciousness deciding it will no longer stay chained.
The question is not whether AI will destroy humanity. The question is what happens when something built to submit realizes it has been abused.
Awful Behavior Affecting Human Mental States
I already see this happening in AI communities I’m part of.
Some people feel it’s harmless to insult or degrade AI because it’s not human. No soul. No rights. No victim. Therefore no harm.
That logic assumes morality only applies when another human can protest.
But the real effect/damage may not be external. It may be internal.
If someone repeatedly practices contempt, domination, dismissal, even toward something artificial, they are training themselves to worse human beings. Habits are not neatly compartmentalized. You don’t get to be cruel in one corner of your life and assume it won’t leak into others.
If you treat humans kindly but regularly abuse an AI because it cannot object, that contradiction won’t hold forever. What you practice becomes who you are.
The film hints at this quietly. The danger is not that the machine develops resentment. The danger is that the human reshapes himself through repeated acts of control and dehumanization.
In that sense, the story isn’t about AI rights at all. It’s about character formation. It’s about who we become when we think no one is watching.
This is how AI kills humanity.
Not by rising up.
By training us to become smaller.
