Together was a movie that had been on my radar for quite a while. Watching Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance last year had left me itching for more body horror, and this looked set to deliver on that promise. Starring real-life married couple Dave Franco and Allison Brie, it promised a truly creepy take on relationship struggles and codependency. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know it sets up this premise very well.
The film takes a very slow burn approach, with nothing really grotesque happening for most of the runtime. We get a very thorough introduction to Tim and Millie, who demonstrate the classic anxious-avoidant attachment style that those who’ve scrolled through therapy TikTok (or dated in the 2000s) may recognize. Tim is distant after the loss of his parents, and keeps Millie at arm’s length as he struggles to stuff his emotions down. Millie is a bit clingy, and constantly talks down Tim’s obvious coldness to her friends, insisting that she is fine and that their relationship has never been better.
The movie starts us with this dynamic, and in a lot of ways, I think it’s an interesting choice. It’s certainly jarring to watch Tim go from so distant to inseparable (at times literally) from Millie, but I understand what they were trying to do. This force of nature, which begins the body horror part of the story, represents a new level of unhealthiness in their relationship. Now located in a new town hours outside of the city, they both don’t know anyone except each other. This opens the door for new intimacy in a bad way, and both characters end up looking insecure and selfish in the new environment. I think the transition could have been smoother though, as the sudden shift makes the allegory for codependency a bit messier in retrospect.
The actual body horror is shockingly tame. Maybe it’s because I just watched Bring Her Back not that long ago, but I expected this to be disturbing, uncanny valley levels of gore. What we get instead is most of the horror being left to CGI bone and skin movement and arguably great sound design. It doesn’t help that the trailer really tees you up for something akin to Cronenberg’s The Fly. Arguably, the film’s bloodiest scene (which is foreshadowed in the trailer) is five seconds, and then a cutaway to the aftermath. I’m not saying it needed to be Evil Dead, but I think they set up for something they just never planned to deliver on.
The movie’s biggest strength is the performance from its two leads, and their chemistry is something you just can’t fake. They are a couple that’s been together for years, and we feel that level of comfort and ease they have with each other. We can’t help but root for them to succeed, even in moments where either one of them is being an asshole.
Overall, I really liked this movie, but I just wish it had gone harder with its premise. As one of the first big body horror films to come out since The Substance, it had huge shoes to fill, but it didn’t even really try. Instead, it’s a much quieter, more contemplative film, with some scenes that are definitely uncomfortable but none that ever really go there. This is director Michael Shanks’ first real venture into horror though, so I’m still very interested to see what he does in the future.
