If Together proves anything, it’s that the scariest thing about relationships isn’t breaking up — it’s merging so completely that you forget who you are. Director Michael Shanks takes this simple emotional idea and stretches it into something grotesque, romantic, and disturbingly funny. Starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, a real-life couple, the film turns domestic tension into body horror, letting metaphor and flesh literally fuse together.
The movie begins in familiar territory: Tim (Franco), an aspiring musician stuck in creative limbo, and Millie (Brie), a driven teacher, move from the city to a quiet rural community. The change is meant to help them reconnect after years of drifting apart. Instead, the isolation highlights how incompatible they’ve become. Their arguments are small at first, about chores, career envy, unspoken resentment, but beneath the surface lies a deeper dread: what if love itself is the thing that’s killing them?
That dread takes form when the couple stumbles into a strange cavern during a hike. After Tim drinks from a mysterious underground pool, something changes. Their skin begins to react to each other in bizarre ways. When they touch, it’s as if their bodies refuse to let go. The more they struggle to separate, the tighter they cling. At first, it’s comic, a twisted metaphor for emotional codependency, but Shanks steadily pushes it into nightmare territory. By the midpoint, their bodies are literally merging, veins and bones threading together as they fight to stay individuals.
What makes Together remarkable is how Shanks and his team treat this transformation with both horror and empathy. The special effects are spectacularly uncomfortable, practical prosthetics and subtle CGI combine to create images that look tactile and revoltingly real. But the emphasis isn’t on gore for its own sake. The horror always circles back to the emotional reality: two people who love each other so much they can’t untangle themselves without bleeding.
Franco and Brie sell every beat. Their performances walk a tightrope between humor, intimacy, and revulsion. Because they’re an actual couple, the tension feels lived-in, the sighs, the small frustrations, the unspoken apologies. When the horror sets in, it feels like an extension of their emotional state rather than a sudden genre shift. Brie gives the standout performance, grounding the surreal events in a fierce sense of self-preservation. Her Millie begins as someone who wants to fix things; by the end, she’s fighting for the right to exist on her own.
Visually, the film is a triumph of tone. Cinematographer Germain McMicking shoots the countryside as something both idyllic and alien, wide golden fields that feel more like traps than escapes. As the story unfolds, the light itself seems to decay, becoming colder and more clinical. Shanks uses the setting to mirror the relationship’s collapse: what starts as open and inviting slowly tightens into suffocating close-ups, as if the world itself is conspiring to seal the couple inside their own bodies.
The soundtrack by Jessica Wells (a frequent collaborator of Shanks) adds another layer of tension. Her use of warped romantic melodies, love songs played backward, and dissonant choral harmonies transforms the familiar into the uncanny. The score doesn’t tell you when to be scared; it lingers, patient and unsettling, like a heartbeat that’s just a little too slow.
Narratively, Together takes big swings. It begins as a quiet relationship study, then morphs into full-blown science fiction horror without ever fully explaining the supernatural element. The ambiguity is intentional. Shanks keeps the focus on emotion rather than mythology; the “why” matters less than the “what now.” For some viewers, that restraint may frustrate. Others will find it refreshingly confident. The film never wastes time spelling out its symbolism; it simply lets you feel it under your skin.
There are flaws, of course. The pacing in the final act drags slightly as the story circles back on itself. A few subplots, including a nosy neighbor who seems to suspect what’s happening, add texture but don’t pay off in satisfying ways. And while the ending is emotionally powerful, it may leave audiences divided. Without spoiling too much, it concludes not with triumph or tragedy but with a grim sort of acceptance. Love, it suggests, can’t always be undone, not even by death.
Still, even with its imperfections, Together is one of the most striking horror films of 2025. It’s both viscerally disturbing and unexpectedly tender. The grotesque imagery serves the emotional truth rather than overshadowing it. Shanks uses horror the way Cronenberg once did: as a mirror to our most private fears about the body, desire, and dependence.
What separates Together from other “elevated horror” offerings is its sly humor. The film never forgets how absurd its premise is: two people literally stuck together, arguing about dinner while fused at the hip. These moments of black comedy make the later horror even more effective. You laugh, then immediately feel queasy for laughing. The tonal shifts shouldn’t work, but they do, largely because the emotions remain consistent. This is a story about the line between intimacy and annihilation, told with equal parts empathy and disgust.
Shanks also deserves credit for trusting practical effects over digital spectacle. The film’s body horror sequences recall 1980s craftsmanship, sticky, handmade, physically present. When the characters fuse, it looks like it hurts. That tactility anchors the metaphor: emotional damage has a texture, and in Together, it’s sinewy, pulsating, and wet.
Beyond its genre trappings, the film functions as a sharp commentary on modern relationships. In a world obsessed with connection, where couples share everything, post everything, live as extensions of each other, Together literalizes the terror of that total intimacy. It asks: when does love stop being love and start being possession? When does closeness become consumption?
By the end, the horror feels inevitable. The couple’s fusion becomes permanent, and their final moments blur tenderness with abjection. It’s horrifying, yes, but also strangely beautiful, two people so desperate not to lose each other that they become one. Whether that’s romantic or tragic is up to the viewer.
Together isn’t an easy film to categorize. It’s a love story, a nightmare, a dark comedy, and a philosophical fable about identity. Shanks’s direction is confident, Franco and Brie deliver career-best performances, and the practical effects make the metaphor hit home in the most literal sense possible.
Adding to the experience, the home release of Together offers a surprisingly rich set of bonus features that deepen both the film’s artistry and its themes. An in-depth interview with writer/director Michael Shanks reveals how the story began as a short sketch about relationship anxiety and evolved into a full-blown horror feature about emotional entanglement. Shanks discusses his decision to rely on practical effects, describing them as “a love language made of latex and regret.”
The interview with Alison Brie and Dave Franco is equally engaging, showing how their off-screen partnership informed their performances — often blurring the line between acting and emotional excavation. Perhaps the most entertaining feature is the “Codependency Quiz,” where Brie and Franco test each other’s boundaries in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the film’s themes, managing to be both hilarious and a little too real. Rounding out the extras are the teaser and full theatrical trailer, offering a fascinating look at how the marketing leaned into dark humor and sensual horror rather than pure shock.
Together, these features form a thoughtful behind-the-scenes package offering genuine insight instead of the usual fluff.
Overall, the film is flawed but fearless. Together takes the oldest story in the world, two people trying to hold on to each other, and turns it into something terrifyingly new.
Together is now available to own on Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UHD
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