Together is a film that made me resent a relationship I’m not even in. It really is that effective. Director Michael Shanks debut feature is one of the most entertainingly uncomfortable explorations of a failing relationship we’ve gotten in a horror film in years. Together just nearly reaches Possession levels of greatness as far as romantic horror goes– but it falls shy of delivering a soul crushing closer like its spiritual sibling.
Get Ready to Hate Love Again With Together
What Possession dives into is a much more aggressive and cutting dissolution of a relationship. Andrzej Żuławski’s magnum opus, inspired by his own divorce, is a couple going at each other with everything. Cleavers, sharp glass, boxcutters, anything to try and hurt each other quickly. Together is instead the story of two animals who are locked together, teeth gnashing and claws scratching at each other, insisting all the way down that no one is getting hurt. There’s an air of crushing codependency that is certainly more passive aggressive, but still painful to see.
The film follows Milly (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco), a struggling couple taking the plunge into the next phase of their relationship: moving into a new house together. Milly is a schoolteacher looking for a change of pace, and Tim is a musician trying to make his rockstar dreams come true. Things only get worse after a going-away party highlights the cracks in their relationship. The two move out to the countryside, where a series of strange events end up drawing them closer together. Not just emotionally or mentally— they are physically being dragged closer and closer together by an unseen force.
Nobody Does a Dying Relationship Better Than Alison Brie and Dave Franco
As a real-life married couple and two of the most charming actors in Hollywood, Brie and Franco expectedly have a chemistry here that can only be described as disgustingly good. Despite the cliché setup of their relationship (he’s the fun one, she has to be the responsible one, conflict ensues), the magnetism in their performances is undeniable. They are naturally pithy beyond belief, bouncing back and forth with attitudes of resentment and genuine affection, directed both inward at themselves and outward at each other.
There are moments of conversation between the two in the film that reek of something real. Brie mentioned in Fangoria that you couldn’t make this film with a non-married couple, and I’m hard-pressed to agree; you need actors who understand each other intimately to achieve results like these. You become an unwitting and unsure third wheel to a couple that both love and hate each other. They’re unable to admit it, and the struggle between them doesn’t let up at all.
One moment in particular involving the intrepid couple meeting their new neighbor was so awkward, so convincingly cringe inducing, it evoked a physical response; the best comparison I could make is a crochet hook working its way up inside my body. The tension here between them pulls on muscle and sinew. When Together hits those dramatic beats of the two arguing and saying what they feel, it really, really hits.
Unbelievable Effects and Aesthetics Will Pull You in Close
That drama is of course accentuated by the big body horror the film’s premise pays off on. The invisible force pulling the two closer results in physical stunts that are mind-bogglingly well executed and look exceptionally painful. When they are brought cheek to cheek by the pull, every single touch, every bit of skin-to-skin counts. Contact between the two will invariably leave you wondering if there is any chance for them to pull away.
The movie doesn’t pull many punches when it comes to that contact going horribly wrong. The digital effects on display are surprisingly the highlight of the film, with lots of nightmare fuel thanks to the CGI of the film showing you just how nasty melding meat can be. I would even go as far to say it ends up outshining the films’ practical work that it’s layered on.
The general atmosphere of the film is impeccable as well, with a varied but always effective set design and lighting. Any scene here that takes place in their bedroom stabs at you with an unsafe feeling, setting the tone early on with what I would say is Together’s most effective scare. The same can be said of the cave where the film’s big inciting incident happens; the dark, muddy pit gets under your nails just looking at it too long, and the big scares it offers crash down on you like a hammer to the head.
What Should Be the Best Horror of the Year…Hindered by a Third Act Tonal Shift
Despite the heaps of praise I have to toss onto Together for its beginning and middle, its feet of clay are obvious: it has a little more dark humor than it knows what to do with by its ending, and it ends up spilling it all over an ending that could have been really, truly devastating.
There’s a comparison to be made somewhere in here to Brian Yuzna’s Society, but whatever it is feels lazy. The similarities are, quite literally, skin deep, mostly stemming from the body horror parallels. Society was heavy with its humor, but that’s the rub: Society doesn’t ever get you sucked into the characters. It’s ultimately mostly spectacle and bizarre humor, and doesn’t make you feel like it’s undercut by its jokes.
But Together does suffer from that. It makes you want to see the big collision course ending it promises, the thirty-car pileup it dangles over you. But then it delivers an ending that doesn’t ever actually crash into you. The laughs Together renders are pale in comparison to the genuinely agonizing moments of discomfort it sparks. From the sandpaper friction between its characters in the film’s first two acts closes with a finale that is funny and even sweet at points. But in its levity, it left me ever so slightly underwhelmed.
Is Together actually the “perfect date night movie” it marketed itself to be? I believed it at first, but whatever it ends off as is unfortunately weaker than what it began as. Together crafts an incredible cinematic experience, starting with the strongest first two acts in a horror movie this year. It’s worth seeing in theaters just for that. But what it closes on is only a mildly satisfying conclusion, one that betrays the stinging nature of its emotional core.
