Vanessa Porter Costumes Humans And Robots In Drew Hancock’s ‘Companion’

The cast of Companion is small, only six characters are required to tell the story. But from the very first frame it is abundantly clear that a great deal of time and effort were spent encouraging the audience, very gently, to wonder about what and who motivates each person (or robot) on screen.

How well do we know anyone? What are humans capable of doing to each other? And, what if it’s solely for their own gratification? These are dark questions, but they feel awfully topical right now. Art exists in response to many social edicts, and one of the ways it serves culture best is to pose uncomfortable questions. Whether or not a robot girl could possess more humanity than her flesh-and-blood circle of human friends? This is an interesting, and extremely relevant, question. It’s also one the filmmakers obviously felt was important, significant enough to dive deep and to explore the many possible implications.

Companion, available in theaters as of January 31, 2025, was written and directed by Drew Hancock. It is “a new kind of love story, from the creators of Barbarian (2022),” according to the official poster. Zach Cregger, writer and director of Barbarian, is a producer, and though the two stories could not be more thematically dissimilar, they share quite a few things that matter. Attention to detail, exceptional production design and excellent costumes which further the narrative every time a character changes outfits. Or doesn’t.

From the posters and trailer, the audience knows going in that Companion is a story about a robot or a cyborg; something machine related and not entirely human, possibly a doll. On the marketing materials, the all-white eyes of Iris, our main character, the wonderful Sophie Thatcher, give her away before the film begins. “At the time that we were making it,” costume designer Vanessa Porter told me about the film, “we were not sure whether they were going to reveal that she was a robot before people saw the movie. So, we were trying to keep it ambiguous. I mean, we didn’t want to hit it too hard.”

The story begins with an archetypical version of a meet-cute and before long we’re traveling with that couple to a mysterious mansion by a lake, one that does not show up on whatever map app the driverless car delivering Iris and Josh (a mercurial Jack Quaid) to his friends for a weekend away. The house is owned by Sergey (an impressively disconcerting Rupert Friend), his date Kat (the beautiful Megan Suri). Couple Eli and Patrick (a wonderful Harvey Guillén and the hot-but-terrifying Lukas Gage), round out the little friend group.

“Basically,” Porter explained, “the overall conceit is that the Empathics Robotics,” the company in Companion that manufactures dolls like Iris, “would have a catalog that people could pick models from, different models that have different traits that you might like in a partner. Josh picks the girl next door model. To distill that down to the most archetypal version, or like the most distilled version of an archetype, we kind of drew from fashion from the 1950s and 1960s. For Iris, it’s Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, where she plays a girl next door. And it’s Brigitte Bardot with the headband.”

One thing Porter made clear to me, something she seems to fundamentally understand, is that Iris needed to remind people of a doll subtly, sometimes just about the edges, nothing loud or obnoxious, but enough that audiences would notice. “The costumes are doll-coded,” Porter explained, “we drew from retro references, and yes, from Barbie, but we also picked things that were relevant now. It’s all on-trend with this, like, cutesy, demure, girly trend that’s happening, so it’s stuff that also can play as regular clothes and then seem more artificial when you’re in the know.”

Any production requires collaboration between the departments responsible for wardrobe, hair and makeup, but this film demonstrates how much is possible when creatives with different skill sets work in concert, when it’s obvious that everyone’s priority was creating the best possible final product. “We were closely collaborating, Joshua First in hair and Sasha Grossman in makeup, to create the look for Iris,” Porter said. “Not to speak for them, but I know they were doing makeup choices where they kept her really matte, like a doll. And when she gets dirty, her makeup doesn’t smudge in the way that a real person’s might. Her hair gets messed up, but her makeup doesn’t smudge. And the clothes, similarly, they get dirty, but they never become untucked. She’s always tucked and neat, but the dirt is kind of on top of the silhouette.”

If, as a child, you ever left a Barbie outdoors overnight, or brought her into a swimming pool and later tried to revert the doll to her original glory, then you’ll probably understand exactly what Porter described. “One of the main things we tried to do with the costumes was to use them to set the tone,” the designer explained, “like a romance movie, a bright, playful movie, and then we let that get subverted by the horror that comes.”

If it is unclear to anyone, this is definitely a horror movie, the opening lines of the film make that abundantly clear, so saying as much is not spoiling anything. It is a playful film, it’s intelligently written and there are many brilliant scenes I will not ruin for my lovely readers. Tropes get subverted, color means a lot, and there are clues and cues almost everywhere. Companion is a film that I suspect could be paused at any frame, and the composition on screen would look like a painting. Nothing here was left to chance, it is an obvious labor of love, and, assuming you like disturbing-but-beautiful, rather gory stories, Companion is a brilliant example of 21st century filmmaking.

Knowing that Iris is not exactly what she appears, the audience is primed to question any information the story offers. The dynamics between the characters, who knows who and how, and for how long, build tension as the screenplay enters its second and then third acts. With a cast of six, just two of the characters women, it is hard not to scour the differences and similarities between Iris and Kat. This could have been a place where the film faltered, but Porter is an excellent designer, and instead of giving anything away the scenes between the two ladies remain deliciously ambiguous.

“We wanted them to be like two sides of a coin,” Porter told me. “The silhouettes they wear are actually really similar.” Describing an early scene in the film, when the group sits down together for dinner, Porter walked me through her process. “Instead of a floral dress like Iris has, Kat has black latex top, these black knee highs, but it’s supposed to be similar in silhouette. It’s supposed to call attention to the fact that she’s also with a partner that’s in a problematic power dynamic with her, that there’s similarities between them. A power struggle with her partner, that’s kind of the coin.”

“We wanted all the characters to feel real, but also to have a little tinge of artificial, where you as an audience might question if there are any other robots. We tried to have everybody look pretty stylized and clean. With Eli, he’s tucked in and in a collared shirt. But we wanted to also make him a little trendier with that mesh shirt underneath. Some of that is also in collaboration with Harvey, who has a strong personal style and was really fun to collaborate with.”

In addition to precise cinematography and excellent clothing, this film tells its story well. It challenges misconceptions and it plays with the viewer, teasing gently, there are few (if any?) jump scares. This is not that type of horror movie. “It functions like a satire,” Porter told me, and I cannot agree with her any more than I do. “The really interesting thing about the Iris character is that her clothes don’t say as much about her as they say about Josh, they really say what he was looking for.”

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