Companion: Insufficiently developed

Companion (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, strong violence and relentless profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing companion piece to I’m Not a Robot, which recently won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

 

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) get a warm greeting, upon arriving at the
setting for their weekend getaway. Alas, a promised "happy outing" soon takes a sinister
turn...

Writer/director Drew Hancock's modest feature takes the core premise into more disturbing territory.  Alas, his film overstays its welcome; it would have made an excellent hour-long episode of the British TV series Black Mirror, but at 97 minutes Hancock flails his way through an increasingly contrived third act.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is introduced while shopping for groceries. Her movements are oddly precise, almost dreamlike ... and, indeed — as we learn momentarily — she’s recalling how she “met cute” with boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). They’re actually en route to a weekend getaway at an attractive home miles off the beaten track.

 

(A bit more opulent than the horror-clichéd  “cabin in the woods,” but the essential remoteness is no different.)

 

Longtime friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) already are present, as is their host: the grizzled Sergey (Rupert Friend), much older than the others, who looks — and sounds — like a Russian mobster.

 

(One wonders how our youthful quintet ever met Sergey, let alone wangled such an invitation ... and Kat’s “explanation” is an eyebrow lift. But we gotta roll with it.)

 

As this first day passes, Iris’ submissive behavior around Josh becomes more obvious, in a Stepford Wives sort of way. She’s beyond submissive; it’s more a case of genuinely worshipping the ground on which he walks. When she describes what it’s like to have made Josh part of her life, she says, “It’s like this piece of you that you didn’t know was broken, and suddenly it’s fixed.”

 

Thatcher’s performance is unsettling and disturbing; is Iris a battered girlfriend?

 

Um ... no.

 

Iris actually is an “emotional support robot.” (This isn’t a spoiler, because the poster art and trailer reveal as much.) Her “love link” has been “established” with Josh, and thus she’s his — well — permanent, no-request-is-too-much girlfriend.

 

These artificial companions can be custom-modified in all sorts of ways — eye and hair color, vocal pitch, intelligence level, and more — via a tablet that Josh never lets out of his sight. Watching several of those options explored in rapid succession, at one point, is a clever bit of special effects.

 

Tellingly, such companions cannot lie.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Explosively tense

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and drug use

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.8.23

I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more films like this one, during the next decade.

 

Director Goldhaber’s riveting ecological thriller unfolds with the intensity of a ticking time bomb … which, climate-wise, intentionally echoes the status of Earth these days.

 

Xochitl (Ariela Barer, far left) and four of her colleagues — from left, Alisha (Jayme
Lawson), Theo (Sasha Lane), Shawn (Marcus Scribner) and Dwayne (Jake Weary) —
wait, at a safe distance, for the next phase of their plan to be executed.

Despite sharing its title with Andreas Malm’s 2021 book, the two have nothing in common. Malm’s nonfiction work argues the futility of moral pacifism and expecting change from “the ruling class” — i.e., Big Oil — in favor of more aggressive climate activism in pursuit of environmental justice. (It’s not a “how to” guide akin to William Powell’s notorious 1971 classic, The Anarchist Cookbook.)

Goldhaber, along with co-scripters Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol, instead have fashioned a non-linear nail-biter very much in the mold of Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 crime thriller, Reservoir Dogs. Both films feature eight primary characters; both intercut the suspensefully developing climax with flashbacks providing key details that explain what draws these folks together.

 

The film opens by following Xochitl (Ariela Barer) as she walks along a city street and, unseen, slashes the tires of a parked SUV; she then slides a one-page manifesto beneath the windshield wipers. She becomes the prime mover behind what takes place soon thereafter.

 

Xochitl grew up in Long Beach, Calif., surrounded by polluting refineries and chemical plants. She became radicalized following the recent death of her mother, during a heat wave likely exacerbated by insufficient air conditioning.

 

Xochitl later joins the others — Shawn (Marcus Scribner), Michael (Forrest Goodluck), Theo (Sasha Lane), Alisha (Jayme Lawson), Logan (Lukas Gage), Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Dwayne (Jake Weary) — at a deserted cabin in West Texas. They’re prepared for a brief but intense stay, having brought food, supplies … and all the elements required to make two large cylindrical barrel bombs.

 

Their efforts reflect meticulous — and quite clever — planning, along with a rigorous attention to detail. During this initial phase, they work under the guidance of Michael, who lives on a North Dakota reservation. Infuriated by how a nearby refinery has imperiled his people’s land, he taught himself how to make increasingly sophisticated bombs and triggering devices.

 

We eventually learn that Xochitl and Theo grew up together. As children, they’d gaily play in the rain … and then suffer, hours later, from chemical burns on their exposed skin. Theo recently has been handed a death sentence of leukemia, which prompts a sense of can’t-lose fatalism; it also further fuels Xochitl’s wrath. Theo’s girlfriend Alisha, horrified by their behavior, tries to be the voice of reason … but ultimately succumbs to the developing plan.