TOGETHER : Relationship Malaise Meets Body Horror
Movie Review By
Tom Lavagnino –
Intimacy is a dicey proposition.
Whether romantic, spiritual, physical, emotional, or some combination thereof, escalating intimacy cannot help but further a connection between two people.
But it can also spotlight the gulf growing between them.
And the horror.
The Sundance 2025 hit TOGETHER showcases Tim (Dave Franco), a thirtysomething musician plagued by rock-star-moment-has-passed-me-by world-weariness, on the receiving end of his grade-school-teacher girlfriend Millie’s (Alison Brie) very public marriage proposal; his lack-of-enthusiasm for the idea, coupled with their haven’t-had-sex-for-a-year-now relationship, prompts Millie to re-invigorate everything by re-locating the two from the city to the country — a hail mary that might, just maybe, who knows?, roust them from the lack-of-intimacy rut.
Things don’t go as planned. Despite Millie’s re-calibration of their lives -– idyllic house, languid evenings together at home, man-cave for Tim (wherein he can work his music) — Tim remains the ill-tempered, self-centered, unwilling-to-marry dude she’s always known; his focus is shredding guitar in the city, not playing house in the woods. The screws get tightened even further after a rain-soaked hike, culminating in the couple’s disastrous plunge into a subterranean sanctuary (with strange, dilapidated-chapel-complete-with-bells ornamentation); after a dark-night-of-the-soul in the cave (and a fateful taste of the grotto’s “natural spring” when their water bottles run dry) Tim valiantly forges their rescue the next morning.
Those slurps, however, prompt strangeness. And while the elixir forces Tim and Millie to finally get it on -– in a sexual encounter long-overdue, overly-intimate, and wildly-inappropriate (happening in the boy’s restroom at school) –- even more change is foreshadowed.
Indeed, what follows in TOGETHER is a disturbing series of supernaturally-prompted, intimacy-oriented set-pieces that effectively takes Tim and Millie on a journey of literal body horror; think of it as a kissing cousin to last year’s THE SUBSTANCE (with the kissing, in this instance, being one of the freakiest horror moments you’ll see in a film this year).
Real-life married couple Franco and Brie bring frankness and brio to their TOGETHER characters, sparking off each other with a spiky tension, realism, and, yes, intimacy that’s a breath of fresh air insofar as horror movies go; their drama-filled journey, throughout this movie, works brilliantly as a metaphor for “couples who don’t feel complete without the other” (the sting of such a philosophy being the bittersweet bedrock for the film as a whole). Writer-director Michael Shanks has the skills, too, to make the visualization of this theme knock you out; though not nearly as hyperbolic as Demi-and-Margaret’s in THE SUBSTANCE, the special effects, here, really get under your skin (sorry, but it was sitting there, and I had to say it).
Though not without its flaws –- the story’s “explanation” ultimately falls a mite short of credibility, the H.R. Giger-ish production design (in that pivotal subterranean chamber sequence) way way way too on-the-nose -– TOGETHER is highly recommended as a sterling addition to the body horror cinema canon (though maybe not so perfect for “date movie night”).
Tom Lavagnino is a playwright, television producer and golfer (18 handicap) living in Southern California. www.tomlavagnino.com
