Directed By Michael Shanks

Starring – Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman

The Plot – Years into their relationship, Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.

Rated R for violent/disturbing content, sexual content, graphic nudity, adult language and brief drug content.

Together Trailer #2 (2025)

POSITIVES

The best horror films of the contemporary age contain with them some thought-provoking insight into a slice of life that make its chills all the more cerebral, and “Together” is certainly no exception to this rule, bringing its bouts of bodily horror a relationship exploration by way of Zeus’ role of separating humans in Plato’s Symposium that challenges many of the conventions typically associated with intimate dating. With a thoroughness of themes pertaining to co-dependency, commitment, and inexplainable magnetism, the script has a unique method of materializing its frights for the audience in ways that takes something universally relatable, and makes it fantastically depraved, with Shanks’ immaculate first time direction catapulting the material with an ominous cloud of inevitability that continuously hangs over the atmospheric engagement from its first few disturbing opening shots. As a writer, Shanks revels in the subtleties and nuances of his character’s evidential confrontation, not only with naturalistically effortless dialogue that doesn’t feel desperate to cram as many aspects about the couple as possible, but also in the commanding of his leads, with body language and internalized responses that effortlessly breed authenticity to both the highs and lows of this tumultuous relationship. Part of this certainly stems from the impeccable chemistry from Franco and Brie as real life husband and wife, respectively, but so much more emphasis pertains to the way Shanks values their time apart every bit as much as he does their time together, conveying two polar opposites in constructs that feeds food for thought to the many roles that each of them play in this instable dynamic, which outlines how their growing connection could be the worst thing for them in ways that neither of them, nor the audience could ever truly grasp. The setting certainly goes a long way in painting this growing uneasiness to the interpretation of the audience, but there’s also this surprisingly stirring amount of awkward humor to the engagement that perseveres quite effectively with caustic wit that simultaneously conveys the bizarreness and humanistic impulses of the situation, without deliberately cutting into the horror in ways that inadvertently chase away the movie’s many frights. Part of this appeal certainly stems from Shanks maintaining a grasp of the comedic material in ways that work as a responsive underlining, rather than a primary focus to a scene’s integrity, but his many persistent ticks in the technical aspects of the movie’s production works wonders in breathing a stirring consciousness that echoes such a chorus of bodily devastation, where our imaginations fill in the gaps of the trauma that Shanks articulates without deliberately overindulging in. The sound design brilliantly articulates all of the swift contortions and even skin fusing that was hinted at but not completely spoiled in the marketing trailers, and Cornel Wilczek’s score incorporating voices, nature and instrumental strings to the air of his compositions, crafts a minimalistic inspiration for impactfully inescapable results. Considering this man has scored my two favorite horror films of the year already, in this and “Bring Her Back”, it proves that the unorthodox approaches from the Australian has wielded such evocative work in the air of his atmospheric experimentation, and in marrying his tones with Germain McMicking’s intimately warm and glowing cinematography, with all of its own innovative camera placements in conveying the vulnerability of this couple’s inexplainable situation. The imagery is the biggest benefactor in the air of the movie’s frights, with surprisingly penetrating jump scares and unsettling imagery within the confines of enveloping darkness that gives the viewer an immersive dysphoria that challenges them to contextualize just what it is that they’re seeing, and while the movie is chilling enough simply from the perspective of two people investing their everything to move into a home plagued by something that they don’t totally understand, it’s downright frightening when the love they have for each other transforms into something that threatens the sanctimony of their newfound situation, drawing them closer in ways that we can’t begin to understand. The pay-offs are utilized with the best of practical and computer-generated special effects that unearth something gruesomely gnarly by the movie’s third act, without sacrificing the familiarity of those involved to maintain the humanity tragically lost in the shuffle, and though the end result enacts an emotional uncertainty that begs us to shriek in terror just as much as it begs us to laugh in ridiculousness, it never compromises the air of the intended execution, gifting us something that sinks in under our skin in the most unshakeable ways, all the while metaphorically mirroring our darkest perceptions with intimacy that will inevitably pave the way for a new generation of guarded personalities. Lastly, I would be doing a grave disservice if I didn’t mention the mesmerizing work from both Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who each enact a raw emotionality and desirable chemistry with one another that allows their protagonists to speak a level of love that uninvolved actors could never reach. While both are solid dramatic actors on their own merits, it’s really the ways that they each look at each other without speaking that articulates everything from passion, to paranoia, to even discontent, ingraining so much believability and psychology to their respective portrayals that sees each of them literally and figuratively sinking into one another, cementing what I truly feel is the best work of each, to date.

NEGATIVES

While “Together” is easily one of my favorite horror movies of the year, it isn’t without issues, particularly in certain aspects with its screenplay that seemingly feel nonchalantly glossed over in its final cut, creating some lingering questions with the concept that I wish were paid more attention. Part of the problem definitely stems from the 97-minute runtime, which feels a bit constricting on the explorative availability of the material, but some unanswered aspects pertaining to a certain neighbor, the surrounding townsfolk, and even the inconsistent rules of the couple’s distancing left more than a few distractions to my complete investment, leaving me wondering if certain scenes of clarity were omitted from the finished product. I certainly have no issue with a movie leaving some questions unanswered, but the ones here feel a bit too vital to the movie’s foundation, and as a result require the audience to go along with things that they might not completely understand, and it makes me wish the script took its time with more of the big reveal, with a third act that definitely feels like the most hemmed, in terms of the consistency from the movie’s editing. Beyond this, the only other issue that I had with the film were some lapses in logic with the bodily contortions that bare with them a surprisingly minimalist impact on sensitive tissue defined almost entirely by vulnerabilities. Even if you can go along with the idea that something supernatural is persisting in this world-building, it doesn’t take away from the fact that these are two human characters who are continuously being twisted and contorted in ways effectively articulated by the aforementioned sound designs, and considering they’re getting up and walking away from such trauma, without anything even remotely ailing their walking or joint motions, it doesn’t add up seamlessly to what we’re shown, serving as the lone instance of downright stupidity for the movie that seems entirely defined by conveniences that it doesn’t remotely earn.

OVERALL
“Together” is a twistedly contorted take on contemporary romance explored in the depths of a bodily horror nightmare that uncomfortably gets under your skin with top notch special effects at its disposal. With an eye-opening directorial debut from Michael Shanks, as well as connective tissue from real-life couple turned co-stars, Dave Franco and Alison Brie, the film captures the kind of tough-to-swallow honesty of intimate relationships that typically lack clarity in the romantic comedies that they typically stem from, giving us a gruesomely thought-provoking exploration that sticks in the best and worst kind of ways.

My Grade: 8.4 or A-