Synopsis: Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.
Stars: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman, Mia Morrissey, Jack Kenny
Director: Michael Shanks
Rated: R
Running Length: 102 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Together stands as one of 2025’s most remarkably assured horror movie debuts that uses genre conventions to explore genuine emotional territory.
Review:
Real-life couples starring in films together have always fascinated audiences, from the electric chemistry of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib to the passionate intensity of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There’s something uniquely captivating about watching genuine intimacy translated through the lens. Shared history becomes an invisible third character. Dave Franco (Now You See Me) and Alison Brie (The Rental) understand this dynamic perfectly in Together, Michael Shanks‘ visceral debut that transforms relationship anxiety into literal body horror with startling effectiveness.
Real Love, Reel Horror: When Chemistry Becomes Claustrophobic
Together is a skin-crawling, bone-fusing, absolutely bonkers body horror metaphor for codependency and identity loss in long-term relationships. There’s a scene early in the film where Franco’s Tim absentmindedly touches Brie’s Millie on the arm, and instead of romantic electricity, it feels like a warning. You sense the unease that runs under their relationship, a frayed thread holding two people who used to be magnetic. Watching Franco and Brie, a real-life couple with a history of creatively sparking off each other, gives this film an immediate emotional texture, twisting it into something uncanny.
It’s not just that their chemistry feels worn-in; it’s that their comfort with each other allows the story to push into unsettling emotional terrain most on-screen couples could never fake. This is where any movie review of Together has to start: with the real, lived-in intimacy that anchors the film’s surreal horror.
Flesh and Bone: The Cave That Changes Everything
The premise sounds wild: a couple at a relationship crossroads retreats to the countryside to reboot their lives with that “this will fix things” optimism that always precedes disaster. That arrives when, after a hike ends in a mysterious cave and a night in its depths, they wake up to find their bodies disturbingly fusing together as if joined by rubber cement. It’s a blink-and-you-miss moment of pain for them, but not for us. From that point forward, the movie begins its unsettling march into the grotesque, as what starts as low-simmer weirdness builds into a full-blown nightmare when limbs begin to stick and skin begins to mesh, refusing to separate without injury.
Restraint Over Gore: A Director's Measured Madness
Shanks, making his directorial debut, demonstrates remarkable restraint in his approach to both the horror elements and the relationship dynamics. Rather than rushing toward gore or cheap scares, he builds tension through the abject boredom of normalcy, letting ordinary domestic moments carry the weight of impending doom. The cave sequence that catalyzes everything feels genuinely unsettling precisely because it begins so mundanely, with the couple simply seeking shelter from a storm.
What emerges in Together on film is gruesome, yes, but it literalizes what most relationship dramas only imply. It isn’t solely about whether they’ll survive whatever is happening to them; it’s about whether they’ll survive each other. They’re not battling a flesh-hungry disease; they’re fighting the version of love that turns you into someone else. You begin to see how easy it is to lose yourself in someone, and how horrifying that can be when you still crave autonomy.
Two Bodies, One Nightmare: Performance Under Pressure
Despite body horror’s tendency toward histrionics, the central performances maintain real humanity. Franco plays Tim like a man unraveling at the seams. His panic and desperation all collide in a portrayal that never tips into caricature. Brie, always a brilliant, soulful actor, gives Millie a steely core that anchors the film’s emotional weight. When she takes a saw to their fused limb in a gut-wrenching scene late in the movie, it’s not just about survival; it’s a woman reclaiming her sense of self.
This is where the film’s casting does its heaviest lifting. A lesser duo might’ve made the premise feel absurd, but this Franco and Brie horror movie walks the tightrope beautifully. Their real-world marriage lends the film authenticity that would be nearly impossible to manufacture, allowing Shanks to explore intimate territory that might feel exploitative with different casting.
Supporting Shadows: Folk Horror Meets Domestic Dread
The supporting cast adds crucial texture without detracting from the main story. Damon Herriman (Run Rabbit Run) plays Jamie, a too-friendly neighbor who seems like the kind of guy you can trust—until you absolutely can’t. His presence adds a folk-horror undertone, especially once the cave’s history surfaces. There’s ritual involved. Symbolism. The implication that merging might not be an accident, but a destination. Herriman navigates these character wrinkles to remain both weirdly sympathetic and genuinely frightening.
Crafting Claustrophobia: Technical Excellence on a Budget
Technically, Together punches well above its modest budget. Germain McMicking‘s cinematography uses familiar domestic spaces to create mounting unease, with shadows and lighting that suggest menace lurking in the most ordinary corners. Cornel Wilczek‘s score deserves particular praise for knowing when to pull back, allowing silence and natural environmental sound to carry much of the film’s tension rather than overwhelming scenes with ominous music. Nicholas Dare‘s production design transforms the couple’s rustic home and surrounding woods into spaces that feel simultaneously cozy and threatening, achieving that delicate balance between comfort and claustrophobia. Finally, Maria Pattison‘s costuming subtly tracks each character’s internal descent.
Beautiful Grotesque: When Body Horror Becomes Art
The film’s most impressive achievement lies in its even-handed treatment of both protagonists. Neither Tim nor Millie becomes the villain. The film doesn’t point fingers. It sees the couple clearly, flaws and all. Their crisis is mutual: one desperate for connection, the other desperate for autonomy. The result is a metaphor that feels both absurd and real, wrapped in the skin of a genre film. The supernatural element literalizes everyday relationship tensions. Couples will recognize uncomfortable truths about their own partnerships.
The transformation sequences themselves strike an effective balance between disturbing and oddly beautiful. Instead of focusing solely on the grotesque aspects of bodily fusion, Shanks finds moments of strange tenderness in the process. A dance scene, set to the Spice Girls’ “2 Become 1,” manages to be simultaneously horrifying and romantic—a sign of the director’s tonal control and the actors’ commitment to material that could easily have become ridiculous in less capable hands.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of scenes you may want to watch through a threadbare blanket. A majority of the effects are practical prosthetics designed by Larry Van Duynhoven, with Shanks himself finding ways to blend them with VFX from Framestore seamlessly. This isn’t just a body horror film — it’s a meditation on identity, autonomy, and emotional entanglement that sticks long after the final frame.
The film doesn’t offer easy answers but provides a visceral exploration of what happens when the line between togetherness and enmeshment disappears entirely. The cave’s mysterious force becomes a metaphor for all the external pressures—societal expectations, family influence, personal insecurities—that can push relationships toward unhealthy extremes.
Love's Dark Mirror: A Genre Film with Something to Say
Together stands as one of 2025’s most remarkably assured horror movie debuts that uses genre conventions to explore genuine emotional territory. As social commentary, the film arrives at a moment when conversations about healthy boundaries and individualism within relationships have become part of mainstream discourse. It’s more than an impressive debut; it’s a sharp, squirmy, emotionally intelligent needling of convention. Shanks proves that horror doesn’t have to scream to hit hard. Sometimes it just has to whisper something you’ve been afraid to admit. Like this: maybe you love someone, but you also need to get the hell away from them.
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