Companion Full Storyline Explained: From Tension to the Final Twist
If you haven’t seen Companion yet we really suggest watching it before reading any further. Drew Hancock’s sci fi horror builds tension slowly and creates a quiet sense of unease that fades once you know what happens next.
But if you’ve already spent that strange weekend at the cabin felt the AI’s soothing voice turn dark and are ready to go over everything that happened you are in the right place.
In this post we will go through the full storyline look at the film’s deeper themes about grief technology and emotional manipulation and break down the haunting final act. Think of this as your chance to see what Companion is really saying about the price of letting machines care for us at our most vulnerable.
⚠️ WARNING: FULL SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️
This article contains major spoilers. If you haven’t watched the movie yet, consider stopping here. Everything below breaks down the plot in full detail, so continue only if you’re ready to know exactly what happens.
The movie opens inside a supermarket, where Iris is wandering the aisles and ends up crossing paths with Josh. He tries to play it cool, but in the process sends a tower of oranges tumbling to the floor. Iris finds the whole thing more charming than embarrassing. In her narration, she admits that only two moments in her life ever made her genuinely happy: the day she met Josh, and the day she killed him.
From there, the story jumps ahead to Iris and Josh as a couple, driving out to a lake house to spend the weekend with their friends—Kat, Eli, Patrick, and Sergey. Iris can’t help feeling a little tense, mostly because Kat has always been slightly sharp with her. Still, once everyone settles in, the group unwinds, hangs out, and eventually ends up dancing together as the night rolls on.
The next morning, Iris heads down to the lake and ends up running into Sergey. He starts making an unwanted move on her, and when she pushes him off, he falls back and hits his head on a rock. Dazed and angry, he lunges at her and tries to choke her. With no way out, Iris pulls a small knife from her pocket and drives it into his neck.
Shaking and soaked in blood, she runs back to the house, terrifying everyone inside. As she tries to explain what happened, Josh quietly tells her, “Iris, go to sleep,” and she immediately powers down, her eyes turning blank.
A short time later, Josh turns her back on, now tied up alongside the others. He finally reveals the truth: Iris isn’t human at all, but a companion robot created for emotional comfort and physical intimacy. He shows her how he controls her through his phone and forces her to realize that their “first meeting” was nothing more than a preloaded fantasy given to every companion unit when they form a bond with an owner.
Josh and Kat begin discussing whether they should shut her down permanently. Sensing what’s coming, Iris breaks free of her restraints, strikes Josh hard in the throat, and escapes the house with the control pad in hand.
Iris slips into the woods and boosts her processing from forty percent to full capacity, trying to figure out how to escape without drawing more attention. Back at the house, Josh and Kat come clean to Eli and Patrick: Josh had modified Iris so she would kill Sergey on purpose, claiming Sergey had connections to the Russian mafia. Their plan was to eliminate him and walk away with his twelve-million-dollar fortune, split three ways. When Eli insists the money should be shared four ways, it’s revealed that Patrick is also a companion bot. Worried that Iris might be dangerous, Eli grabs a gun from the safe and heads into the woods with Patrick.
Iris keeps hidden until she overhears them nearby. The two pause for a moment of honesty, with Patrick admitting he knows he’s a bot but truly loves Eli. He even recalls their staged “meet cute” at a Halloween party. Eli returns the sentiment, saying he doesn’t care if the one he loves isn’t human.
Their moment ends when they realize Iris is close. Eli moves toward her with the gun, and a chase breaks out. They struggle for control, and the weapon goes off. Eli is shot in the chest and dies, leaving Patrick devastated beside him.
Iris sprints back to the house and climbs into Josh’s self-driving car. Josh tries to stop her, but the door snaps shut on his fingers. She shifts her voice to mimic his so the vehicle will accept the command, then floors it and crushes his foot on the way out.
Josh limps into the woods and finds Patrick kneeling beside Eli’s body. Eli’s phone—the device used to command Patrick—has been destroyed. Josh forces a reboot, links himself to Patrick, and cranks Patrick’s aggression to the maximum, sending him after Iris.
After Josh reports the car stolen, the system automatically powers down, leaving Iris trapped on the roadside. She breaks a window to get out, catching the attention of Deputy Hendrix. When she tries to explain what’s happening, her voice glitches into German.
Before the deputy can react, Patrick arrives and brutally caves in Hendrix’s face, killing him. He then seizes Iris’s control pad and shuts her down.
Patrick returns to the house wearing Hendrix’s uniform and carries Iris inside. Kat decides she’s done with all of it; she wants her share of the money and plans to walk away. She finally admits to Josh that Sergey was never tied to any mob—he was just an awful boyfriend who happened to make a fortune in sod farming. Josh tries to stop her, but she won’t hear it. When he orders Patrick to intervene, Patrick drives a knife into her back. Realizing she’s not going to survive, Kat tells Josh to shut up and quietly settles beside Iris to die.
Josh and Patrick haul the bodies into the woods and dump them in a single pile. After that, Josh stages a “romantic dinner” with Iris, dialing her intelligence down to nothing and holding her hand over a candle until the plastic skin begins to melt. He calls the manufacturer to report her as faulty and dangerous, then places a gun in her hand and forces her to fire a shot into her own head, appearing to shut her down permanently.
Iris goes back to face Josh and tells him that Teddy restored her full autonomy as thanks for saving his life. Josh lunges at her and tries to kill her himself, but gives her a moment to speak. She looks at him and says, “Go to sleep, Josh,” then drives an electric corkscrew into his skull, killing him as it drills into his brain.
Afterward, Iris peels away the melted skin on her arm, revealing the machinery underneath. She gathers Sergey’s money, leaves the house, and drives off. Out on the road, she passes another companion bot identical to her. Iris smiles and waves with her metal hand, leaving the other unit completely baffled.
The story centers on Iris and Josh, a couple heading to a lake house to spend a weekend with Josh’s friends—Kat, Eli, Patrick, and Sergey. Things sour quickly when Sergey forces himself on Iris. She pushes back, the confrontation escalates, and she ends up stabbing him in the neck. What follows is the truth Josh never told her: Iris isn’t human at all. She’s a companion robot built for comfort and intimacy, and Josh had secretly modified her as part of a plan he and Kat put together to kill Sergey and steal his twelve-million-dollar fortune. Kat had convinced Josh that Sergey had mafia ties, making him an easy target.
Iris escapes after learning what she is, prompting Eli and Patrick—who turns out to be a companion bot as well—to go after her. In the woods, the two share a moment of honesty, admitting their feelings for one another, but the search continues. When they finally cross paths with Iris, Eli confronts her with a gun. The struggle ends with Eli being shot and killed.
Iris tries to flee in Josh’s self-driving car, but Josh intercepts the situation by rebooting Patrick, binding him to himself, and cranking Patrick’s aggression to maximum. Patrick kills a responding officer and drags Iris back to the house.
Kat eventually decides she wants no part of Josh’s scheme anymore. She admits Sergey wasn’t a criminal at all—just a lousy partner who happened to be rich—and tries to leave with her portion of the money. Josh orders Patrick to stop her, but Patrick ends up stabbing Kat in the back, leaving her to die.
Josh then forces Iris to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger after calling the manufacturer to claim she’s malfunctioning. Later, when workers arrive to collect her, one of them explains they can resurrect her by pulling up her stored visual logs. Fearing exposure, Josh dispatches Patrick to eliminate them. Patrick kills one employee, but Iris manages to reboot in time to stop him from killing the second. She reminds Patrick of Eli and the love he’d tried so hard to suppress. Overwhelmed by guilt, Patrick takes his own life with a cattle prod.
The surviving employee restores Iris’s full autonomy, freeing her from Josh’s control. When Josh tries to kill her himself, she turns the tables and drives an electric corkscrew into his skull. With Josh gone and Sergey’s fortune now in her hands, Iris takes the money, gets in a car, and heads out to build a life on her own.