“Iris, wake up!”

Early in “Companion,” lovely Iris and her nerdy-nice boyfriend, Josh, are driving to a secluded lake house for a stay with friends. Iris wakes from a nap and tells Josh she was dreaming about him. They reminisce about how they first met at the supermarket. All those oranges tumbling onto the floor!

In 20 minutes, everything about this sweet scene will be terrifyingly turned on its head. And so we begin with a dilemma. “Companion,” an exceedingly clever and entertaining sci-fi-horror- thriller-comedy by Drew Hancock in his feature debut, has more twists and turns than a corkscrew. But it’s impossible to write about the film without revealing the first of those twists.

If you like coming in cold to a movie, then we’re sorry to see you go, but stop reading. Otherwise, stay — we promise there’ll be more surprises to come.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) arrive at the estate. A nervous Iris stops at the door, worried that Josh’s friends won’t like her. He urges her to brighten up.

Kat (Megan Suri), Josh’s ex, greets them. She is gorgeous, and frosty to Iris. Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend, Patrick (Lukas Gage), are nicer. Then there’s Sergey (Rupert Friend), Kat’s aloof Russian boyfriend — sugar daddy, really — and owner of the house. The password to his devices is Stalin’s birthday, which tells you something.

The next morning, someone dies. They will not be the first — this is a horror movie. And suddenly, Iris, caked in blood, finds out what everyone else knows about her, but she did not: She’s a robot — well, a sex bot. A custom “companion” programmed by Josh to be as docile as he wants. He can even control the level of her intelligence.

Iris doesn’t understand. “I feel things,” she protests. Just the programming, Josh replies. Her tears? They come from a refillable reservoir in her body. But she has memories, she says — like when they met! That scenario was chosen from a drop-down menu, she’s told.

For reasons we won’t detail here, Iris ends up on the run. What are the odds of a sex bot escaping her pre- programmed limitations? Suffice it to say that whatever you expect to happen, does not.

The supporting cast is excellent, especially Gage, but the leads are especially well cast. Thatcher manages to be not actually human, but way more relatable than the actual people around her.

And Quaid, with his full-cheeked Quaid-ian good looks, is an ideal choice for a “nice guy” who grows more odious by the minute. One of his lower points comes when he explains to Iris how the world seems to be “rigged against people like me.”

“I don’t even own you,” he rails — “you’re a (expletive) rental! I deserve so much more than this.”

Hancock is exploring the fertile area of artificial intelligence — the movie is set in a “not-too- distant future” where bots are an acceptable relationship choice and cars drive themselves, but most everything else looks the same.

The irony, though, is that it’s not the cool futuristic flourishes but good old-fashioned human intelligence that makes the movie work. Kudos to Hancock for making the film crackle along wittily.

MPA rating: R (for strong violence, sexual content, and language throughout)

Running time: 1:37

How to watch: In theaters