Together (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Guilty pleasure. Schadenfreude. Sadistic indifference. Call it what you will, but I find immense pleasure in horror stories of heterosexual relationships. And no, I don't mean sentimental claptrap of realistic relationships falling apart, like in Marriage Story. I mean fantastic stories of what dating these days is really like (Fresh, Drop), Gothic spins on gender inequalities and microaggressions (Companion, Strange Darling), and brave interrogations of codependency (Midsommar). This last one actually helps inform my approach to Together, the feature debut of writer and director Michael Shanks, which was quietly released this past summer. I nearly missed it on my own radar due to my chaotic season and because of its rather niche subject matter; the marketing was minimal, and if it weren't for Neon distributing it -- and the considerable star power of its leads -- I might have missed it entirely.

As its title suggests, Together concerns Tim and Millie, a young man and woman who move to a rural cul-de-sac so that she can teach elementary English. Tim, an aspiring musician, has been despondent since his parents died; we don't get much information about the bulk of their apparently lengthy relationship, but it's clear the two love each other. So much, in fact, that their impending move spurs Millie on to propose to Tim in front of all their friends at a farewell party. He freezes -- a hesitation that at first seems bizarre but eventually makes sense when you start picking up on the really awkward passive-aggression and emotional manipulation that characterize their relationship -- and Millie is embarrassed and self-pitying. Which makes sense, even beyond the botched engagement; she's preparing to fully support his lazy ass, and his simpering personality seems put-on, likely after a long time of her demands and expectations. So when they go hiking through the forest around their new neighborhood in a rain storm, we know things won't end well. Even if you haven't seen Significant Other or Backcountry, you can expect this is the beginning of the end for our fair lovers.

They fall into a sinkhole together, filthy rainwater pouring down around them, not grievously injured but enough to stay put until they can climb out in a drier and safer way. Before settling down to rest, Tim drinks from still water deeper in the cave they've found, and this is really the one moment I almost lost the plot. Even Millie says something to the effect of do not drink from stagnant dark water in a random muddy cave you foolish suicide risk. Without spoiling things, the water here plays a part of the lore of the story -- which involves a defunct cult and its marriage rites -- that is interesting and fun while firmly making the story clear-cut supernatural horror. I wondered, while watching, why the filmmakers chose that route; sometimes, a film like this that is really about an abstract concept (in this case, romantic codependency) works best in its ambiguities. Think of The Night House or Relic: you can enjoy them as thoroughly straightforward supernatural horrors, or you can enjoy it as a deeply emotional parable in which the supernatural elements could just be generic trappings or even manifested by the protagonist's psyche. Not so in Together, where the point is still codependency, but it's exacerbated by explicit external forces. Indeed, the introductory sequence ends with a horrific yet split-second shot of two dogs becoming one in a grotesque image reminiscent of Carpenter's The Thing. And that's not even five minutes in.

It's not quite on the level of psychological thriller as those titles, though, and Together works best as a chamber piece between its two leads. Franco and Brie, who are married in real life and produced this project, must have had a wickedly good time playing these characters, though one shudders to think of the therapy and intimacy coordination the two surely underwent during this process. Love, as we know, is often both frightening and angry, and to play a relationship in which the separate parties are literally beginning to meld had to have broken open tons of fascinating and intensely private conversations. Oh, to be a fly on those walls....

For melding is the name of the game. In the cave, Tim and Millie wake to find their legs sticking together, with a gooey fleshy residue combining them. Later, the same -- and worse, much worse -- continues to happen at increasing intervals. Tim occasionally acts almost possessed (I thought of Night Swim more than once), and while that didn't make much sense to me, the film does continue to lean on the invisible forces at work. By the film's climax, the characters are literally being dragged toward each other from opposite ends of their driveway and hallway; the film's internal logic slyly evades who or what is acting upon them by making these sequences opportunities for the couple not to problem-solve but to trade jabs and provoke laughs more than screams. 

Yet it's not a rollicking comedy, either. In the plentiful scenes of their "merging," the couple are subjected to body horror like I haven't seen on screen in years. This is golden age Cronenbergian shit. A scene with their forearms and a reciprocating saw had me yelling into a pillow; the film's only sex scene in a bathroom stall had me clenching in a fetal position. These are the brilliantly devised scenes that make the film unfortunately memorable, but in the best way. Actually, the more I think on it, this film is quite a lot like Lars von Trier's Antichrist, and though I had once said I'd never revisit that nightmare of a film, I'm inspired to take some chill pills and give it another go with Together fresh on my mind. They're definitely cut from similar cloth.

What happens when you've finally got the relationship you've always thought you wanted, but the settling and renegotiation of that relationship reveals that you're probably better off alone? That seems to be what the film is getting at, and it's helped by an inscrutable and highly effective Damon Herriman as Jamie, the couple's closest neighbor and a perhaps too friendly coworker at Millie's school. He's sweet and a little creepy, and neither we nor the couple knows exactly what he's after. He helps us understand the couple's isolation and codependence by giving them someone to discuss and avoid, a counterpoint to their apparently large friend group in the city. And I will absolutely not spoil the end, which goes in perhaps the one direction I did not predict. That I will leave for you, dear reader, to discover, if you think you want to stomach the body horror that leads you there.