Companion

 Companion is a very clever, extremely solid sci-fi thriller. It's best, but not necessary to go in blind - One major, scene-setting twist is spoiled in its trailers, but that's basically the premise, and there are plenty of fun twists afterwards. So if you don't know anything about the movie, then ignore the rest of this write-up and go watch it, but don't sweat it if you find out what it's about. It's still very enjoyable. I will have to give it away in a little bit, it'd be a very short write-up if I didn't - so be warned.

 Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) are a seemingly loving young couple who go spend a weekend at a lake house with some of Josh's friends: the surly Kat (Megan Suri), who seems to have something against Iris right from the beginning; Sergey (Rupert Friend), a rich Russian asshole type and owner of the cabin and all the land around it; Plus Pat (Lukas Gage) and Eli (Harvey Guillén), another sweet-as-molasses couple.

 Iris seems a bit off from the get-go, as her inner life revolves around her beau to an unhealthy degree and has some odd mannerisms. The explanation arrives quickly (and this is the spoiler): she's a sexbot, an android shell with an AI that's unaware that she's artificial.
 This comes to the fore when she kills someone in the house in self-defense, and is explained by Josh in terms that increasingly paint him as a douchebag (he basically gives her a hilariously insensitive pep talk as he explains to her he'll need to switch her off and wipe her, because she's obviously defective).

 Things go to shit, of course; If futurama has thought us anything about robosexuality, it's that the path to robot hell is paved with human flesh.

 As mentioned, that's only the premise of the movie. From there Iris has to become independent if she's to survive, and all sorts of cool ideas and fun plot complications follow. Writer/Director Drew Hancock's script gets pretty creative, even to the point of having some fun with its structure - Barbarian's Zach Creggers was originally slated to direct, and it's easy to see what drew (ha!) him to the project.

 Hancock's comedy background (he was the creator of Cautionary Tales of Swords!) serves him well - Companion goes about its business seriously, but there's an infectious sense of humour lurking behind many of its lines and developments.

 It does get a little too didactic on the finer points of toxic masculinity - a little more subtlety would do the film a world of good - but that's a minor misstep, easily papered over by Jack Quaid's boyish charm.

 As good as Quaid is, this is Thatcher's movie - hers is a complicated role, an anxiety-ridden, lovelorn waif who discovers that she can literally empower herself. All that, plus she looks a little too perfect to be flesh and blood. Guillen's also memorable, though he's getting a bit too close to getting typecast as a human teddy bear.
 It's a beautiful film to look at, with cinematographer Eli Born drenching everything in the warm, pastel hues of a romantic comedy. The script is doing the usual Hollywood thing of using sci fi concepts as a springboard for its story; It's smarter than it needs to be, which makes it easy to forgive the film for showing a near future that's remarkably similar to our present despite true AI (not the bullshit engines making the rounds) and lifelike robots cheap enough to be mid-tier consumer products. The few FX we do get to see (which include a fun Terminator reference) are fine. It's not a very gory movie, but the one nasty bit is ill-served with unconvincing CGI.

 I don't want to oversell it, but this one's pretty good.