Alison Brie, Damon Herriman, Dave Franco, film festivals, horror, Jack Kenny, Michael Shanks, movies, reviews, Sarah Lang, Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Together
July 28, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Michael Shanks
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of the United States, the horror film “Together” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After moving from a large city to a rural area, two live-in lovers accidentally fall into a mysterious cave and are able to climb out, but strange things begin happening to their bodies, which start to act like magnets to each other.
Culture Audience: “Together” will appeal primarily to people who fans of stars Dave Franco and Alison Brie and body horror movies that offer a suspenseful and sometimes comedic look at coupledom.
“Together” is a rare horror movie that seamlessly blends unsettling body horror with darkly amusing observations about couples in co-dependent relationships. The movie takes a few unexplained shortcuts but is mostly suspenseful. There are a number of ways that “Together” could have ended. And the movie’s ending is not what most people would guess.
Written and directed by Michael Shanks, “Together” is his feature-film directorial debut and had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The movie centers on a couple in love but in a relationship that has grown somewhat stagnant and is put to the test when they literally can’t get away from each other. Viewers who are expecting a full explanation for the superatural occurences in the movie won’t get complete answers, but there’s enough information revealed to offer enough glimpses into why all horror is taking place.
“Together” begins by showing a wooded area in an unnamed part of the United States. (“Together” was actually filmed in Australia.) A search party with dogs is taking place for a missing couple named Keri (played by Sarah Lang) and Simon (played by Shanks), who lived in the area and suddenly vanished. The movie eventually reveals what probably happened to this couple.
Meanwhile, another couple is shown at a going-away party at the couple’s house from which they are moving. Tim (played by Dave Franco) and Millie (played by Alison Brie), are in their 30s who live together and have been dating each other for nine years. Alison and Tim are moving from an unnamed city to a rural area because Alison got a job as an elementary school teacher in this year. Tim is a musician who used to be in a band with a record deal but he’s now an independent solo artist who’s working on a solo album but he will occasionally hire himself out for touring jobs.
That’s exactly what happens when Millie’s musician brother Luke (played Jack Kenny) offers Tim a job as a guitarist to tour with Luke’s band. It’s a job that Tim accepts without much convincing that has to be done Luke also mentions to Tim that Tim should consider getting record deal because a record company would be able to better fund a tour.
It’s not said out loud, but it’s obvious: Tim doesn’t have a steady income, while Millie does. Tim isn’t too keen about moving out of the city, but he has to make this relocation, in order to support Millie and her career decision. During the course of the movie, it becomes apparent that Tim’s financial insecurity is at least some of the reason why there are some cracks in the relationship between Tim and Millie.
The cracks begin to show at the party when, as their gathered friends are watching in the living room, Millie gets down on one knee in font of Tim, mimes opening an invisible box with an invisible engagement ring, and asks him if he’ll spend the rest of his life with her. A visible shocked Tim doesn’t say anything at first. Awkward.
Tim then snaps out of his hesitation and says yes. But he took too long to answer. And his response looks forced and faked. Millie and everyone else in the room can sense it too. It doens’t completely ruin the party, but the mood definitely changes. Later, after the party is over, Tim and Millie are in bed, and he tells he’s sorry for being a jerk. Millie seems to accept his apology.
As time goes on, Tim is show to be more the more self-absorbed and less-committed partner in this relationship. Millie has some issues too. For example, she can be passive aggressive in her communication by expecting Tim to anticipate in advance what she wants instead of coming right out and telling him directly. Millie’s quasi-marriage proposal is an example of that passive-aggressiveness. She wants Tim to propose marriage to her, and that was her way of “nudging” him to do it without telling him directly.
Millie settles in quickly at her new job, where she strikes up a rapport with a friendly co-worker named Jamie (played by Damon Herriman), who happens to the closest neighbor to Millie and Tim in the wooded area where they live. One day, Millie and Tim take a hike in the woods. Tim notices a bell hanging on a tree. The bell has a carving of a sun on it.
Tim falls down in a hole and takes Millie with him when she tries to pull him out of the hole. Their cell phone can’t get signals where they are in this part of the woods. Inside the hole is a small cave, where Tim and Millie see a bell with a carving of a sun on it. It’s the same type of bell that Tim saw earlier. The cave also has some broken church pews that are scattered around the area.
There’s also a large puddle of what looks like fresh water in the cave. Tim takes a drink first and tells Millie that the water tastes fine. She also drinks some of the water, but not as much as Tim. Millie and Tim spend the night in the cave. And the next morning, they find out that there’s a unknown sticky substance that made the sides of their legs stuck together.
Tim and Millie painfully pull their legs apart, which leaves minor injuries. Millie and Tim are then able to climb out of the cave hole. Which begs the question: Why couldn’t they pull themselves out of the hole earlier?
At this point, if you’ve seen the trailers for “Together” or know that this is a body horror movie, you can guess how much of the movie will proceed. Tim’s and Millie’s bodies start acting like magnets to each other, with each incident getting progressively worse. As shown in the movie, Tim has past traumatic issues about his deceased parents that cause him to have nightmares. Millie’s parents are still alive and plan to eventually visit Millie and Tim in the couple’s new home.
Franco and Brie—who are a married couple in real life and who are two of the producers of “Together”—carry the movie with their naturalistic performances in increasingly bizarre situations. There are some body contortions and various “body fusions” that are intended to be cringeworthy, but some of these scenes are actually very funny. “Together” has some clever physical manifestations of being “stuck” in a relationship. In many ways, “Together” isn’t just about being a couple in a co-dependent romance. It’s also about what sacrifices can be made in the name of love.
Neon will release “Together” in U.S. cinemas on July 30, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on July 21 and July 23, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on August 26, 2025.