Companion is the most surprising movie of the year and in years. It’s best to know as little as possible about the story, but even if you know the basics, it is still full of surprises. The bonus features on the new 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD reveal another surprising alternate version of the movie.
In Companion, Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is a robot girlfriend who kills someone in self-defense. This forces her owner, Josh (Jack Quaid), to tell her the truth. Writer/director Drew Hancock originally thought of making Iris the villain, but quickly realized she’s the hero.
“When I was first writing the script, Iris was going to be bad,” Hancock says. “I realized really early on she was the character I was relating to the most. When you’re watching stories, the person who’s suffering the most is the person you identify with.”
That’s what makes Companion refreshing. Apocalyptic robot stories from 2001 to The Terminator to Ex Machina are great, but in 2025 Hancock needed Companion to stand out.
“There are so many movies about AI,” he said. “Everyone’s first instinct is to do a story of AI gone wrong. That’s been done a billion times but what if the most relatable character in the movie is the AI?”
These comments come from two of the three five-minute features on the disc, and there’s more from Thatcher, Quaid, Harvey Guillen, Lukas Gage and the production team. When her robot arm is revealed, that’s practical. Her real arm is in the green sleeve to be removed by VFX, but she’s swinging a real robot arm!
The film’s lush mountain forest setting looks good in 4K and holds up with all the modern digitally shot films on 4K.