Writer-director Michael Shanks’ unnerving, but overly familiar thriller Together blends relationship fears and body horror into a consistently captivating nightmare. Boasting a pair of fully invested lead performances from a real life couple and a nice balance of emotional brutality and empathy, the strongest elements of Together make up for a pronounced sense of predictability and obviousness. Shanks’ film is more interesting when looking at how things are done rather than what’s actually being said or presented. Shanks’ views on the way relationships change people over time are writ large, in bold, underlined, italicized, and repeated throughout the film like the same notes being played over and over again on an instrument, but as a complete piece, Together is undeniable in its effectiveness.
Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) are embarking on the next big step in their nearly decade long relationship. After Millie is offered a teaching position in a small town, the couple packs up their life and moves from the big city (where all of musician Tim’s friends and closest contacts remain) and into a charming cottage house in the woods. Tim is hesitant when it comes to the topic of marriage, often acting distant towards Millie. One can tell just from looking at them and how they interact that Tim is starting to resent Millie, but she’s more into him than ever and is eager to share the rest of their lives together in the new home. One day, while on a rainy hike through the surrounding woods, the couple falls into a sinkhole that leads to a massive cave. Low on supplies to last through the storm, they drink from the seemingly safe water bubbling up from below. They get out of the cave in one piece the next morning, but the bond between them has changed on physical and psychological levels, with their bodies and minds acting like magnets that keep bringing them together in frightening, disgusting ways.
While it’s fine enough as a feature, Together is the sort of material that often works better as a short. There’s not much to set up, every visual or narrative metaphor is an obvious one, and it’s easy to get around to the point. When taken to feature length, this is a concept that forces Shanks to keep repeating the same notions and themes rather than stating them once and leaving things at that. Tim and Millie’s agony takes codependency to new heights, and the squabbles that occur between Tim and Millie have a believable undercurrent of both love and frustration. The symbiosis of their relationship is something that a lot of people will recognize from their own past and present romances, but nothing here is especially revelatory, with Together openly admitting its own basic nature at various points, making the film nothing if not self-aware.
There are visual metaphors abound about distance in relationships (both physical and emotional) and addictions (like the alcoholism Tim is trying to keep at bay), but even these moments don’t have much of anything new to say. Once Together starts inching closer to oopy, goopy territory, Shanks attempts to implement a half-hearted system of rules as to how the couple’s growing attachment works, but it might’ve been better if the director just let the viewer’s imagination take the wheel when it comes to explanations. The cave turns out to be tied to a cult of some sort, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where all the signs and symbols around that part of the woods are pointing and what the ultimate end game is going to be, meaning the element of surprise is lacking down the stretch. In a shorter form, Together could work around these issues, but as a feature, the audience is left to just wait for things to play out like boxes getting ticked off a checklist.
It sounds as if I don’t really like Together, but there’s enough good stuff in here to make it a worthwhile watch. Casting two capable performers who just so happen to be an off screen couple is a shrewd choice. Franco and Brie are able to create a realistic depiction of lovers in free-fall through a palpable sense of shorthand that creates a lived-in experience, and both are up to the physically and emotionally draining challenges of the body horror genre. They carry the film on their collective, sometimes physically linked shoulders over some of Shanks’ less inspired beats.
Shanks also proves to be a masterful genre technician with a wicked sense of humour. The cinematography is uncomfortably intimate. The special effects make-up and digital effects are horrific and shocking to behold. The film’s score and sound effects are creatively discordant and varied. And just as things are getting bleaker for Tim and Millie, Shanks’ script make the brave and sharp choice to make things funnier amid the chaos, almost as if their physical predicament is nothing compared to what they’ve already been through, even if at one point it requires them to turn to Chekov’s reciprocating saw for a way out.
It’s the playful direness of the film’s unhinged, go for broke final act that ultimately swayed me on Together. Even as the pieces fell together without much surprise or deviation, I recognize Together is a film that will hit people in different ways, and one’s personal feelings towards it will be dictated by the baggage they bring into the theatre with them. It can be read either as a screed about how couples can be torn apart by arguing over who sacrificed more to stay in the relationship or how they can be brought closer together through those same sacrifices. No matter how one reads it, Together requires the viewer to overlook a degree of repetition and padding, but it’s guaranteed to make them squirm in their seat and take a look inside themselves long after the film has ended.
Together opens in theatres everywhere on Wednesday, July 30, 2025.
