Together (2025)
What starts out feeling familiar—just another story about a couple hoping a change of scenery might fix their relationship—soon becomes something much stranger. And far more compelling. Together, the debut feature from Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks, explores romantic intimacy with an unsettling precision. It’s darkly funny, at times grotesque, and always emotionally charged, turning closeness into something deeply physical and even a little disturbing.
Tim and Millie, a real-life couple played by Dave Franco and Alison Brie, move to the countryside, hoping that distance from city life might help heal their cracks. But instead of space, they find something that pulls them too close for comfort—literally. A strange, supernatural twist draws them into a shared experience that blurs where one ends and the other begins. What unfolds is part body horror, part relationship drama, and part meditation on identity and dependency.
Franco and Brie ground the film with performances that feel lived-in. Their chemistry never feels forced. There’s a quiet rhythm to their interactions—small silences, unfinished thoughts, glances that carry years of unsaid things. Brie’s Millie seems to be slowly slipping into the background of her own life. Franco’s Tim, meanwhile, isn’t framed as the villain, just a man who can’t tell the difference between being close and being consumed. Together, they carry the emotional weight of the film. Some of the side characters, like their friend Jamie, aren’t given much room to grow, functioning more as reactions than people. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but it narrows its emotional landscape.
The practical effects here are striking. The film leans into body horror with a kind of textured realism that’s hard to look at but impossible to ignore. There’s something deeply human about how the bodies twist and meld—not just shocking, but symbolic. It’s a visual metaphor for the way we can lose ourselves in another person. When the film uses puppets and physical props, the result is tactile and visceral. The few digital effects in the final stretch are fine, but they don’t have the same impact. The world of the film feels most real when it’s at its weirdest.
At its core, Together is about boundaries—and what happens when they collapse. It asks what it really means to become one with another person. The film doesn’t romanticise that idea. Instead, it warns us: the desire to merge completely might not be love—it might be erasure. There’s a quiet critique here of the cultural myth that we need someone else to be whole. That idea, taken to its extreme, becomes something monstrous.
The story builds slowly. It starts with a sense of unease and carefully raises the tension, not through jump scares but through emotional friction. In the second half, it leans into the surreal and the grotesque, and for the most part, that risk pays off. Still, the final 15 minutes bring in a cult subplot that feels like a distraction. It adds noise to a story that had been so focused on two people, in one place, dealing with something intimate and terrifying.
What makes Together work is that it doesn’t just want to be clever or creepy—it wants to say something true. About love. About identity. About how easy it is to lose yourself when you care too much. It’s a strange, sad, smart film that doesn’t pull punches. Yes, it has its flaws—a cluttered ending and a few flat characters—but its core is strong.
It’s a bold film. One that’s not afraid to go to uncomfortable places. You might squirm, but you’ll also think. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll look at closeness a little differently. A surreal and deeply felt look at what happens when being “together” goes too far. Strange, moving, and surprisingly honest.