A robot girlfriend called Iris (Sophie Thatcher) rebels against the forces of toxic masculinity in this comedy-thriller they should have called Sex Machina.

The AI sex-slave story has been told countless times, from The Stepford Wives to Weird Science. But the recent rise of sexbots means Companion is not really sci-fi so much as an act of headline-hopping; a move so calculated it might as well have been conceived by artificial intelligence. Without the intelligence. Or art.

And while the stereotyped characters scream AI bias, no artificial intelligence worth its synthetic salt would break its own rules as readily as Drew Hancock’s debut feature. Iris is either driven by pre-programmed love for her human boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) or her will to survive, depending on the requirements of each scene.

This is all at the service of a half-baked plot about Josh modding the robot in order to commit a crime, which he does by sliding her aggression or intelligence up and down on his robot girlfriend app. The whole system seems wide open to abuse, though this is less a call for tech regulation and more a case of the film’s own intelligence being dialled to zero. Which is still higher than killer-doll movie M3GAN.

In any case the plot is so convoluted they forget to give Iris any personality or explore the gender dynamics better developed in Harry Styles “movie” (his words) Don’t Worry Darling. You could argue that Companion isn’t trying to make you think and that stupid, lazy films are fun, but that’s exactly what it wants you to think.