Fantasy advertisement for celibacy Together (2025) starts with a search team in the woods, looking for two people – two names are being called, but two people go undiscovered. Almost immediately, we see what the search team does not, as the camera pans down below ground level, where some search dogs seem to have found something. Oddly, they don’t signal – but they drink some standing water while they’re down there, before returning to their handlers (somehow – good climbers?) with something newly odd about them. Later, from their enclosure, their terrified cries reveal that something worse than odd has happened, in a brief but punchy nod to a very well-known body horror from the Eighties which, were I to name it, would give a lot away, but the fact that I haven’t named it almost achieves exactly the same thing, because you’re very likely thinking about the right film, right now.
Let’s say just that there’s something weird out there in the woods, and we know this before we meet our protagonists, Nice but Mismatched Couple Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco), who are about to set aside their misgivings to move to…the woods. More specifically, they are about to move to the country as Millie has a new teaching job. Tim is a struggling musician, something he can do anywhere and, as a struggling musician, he has hubris and self-reproach in good balance, all ready to transport to his new abode. We meet the couple at their leaving party, allowing time and scope for us to see some of their relationship issues and to know full well that they will be taking these issues with them, alongside all of their earthly goods.
Once settled in, Tim and Millie begin to familiarise themselves with the new area, heading off on a hike and in record time stumbling upon – or really, falling into – the same underground structure we’ve already seen, which is far bigger and even more ominous than we may have first gleaned. After spending the night there, heading off dehydration during their stay (uh-oh), they manage to clamber out and return to the house. But by now there’s something severely off between them, manifesting chiefly in terms of their bodily autonomy, now that its external boundary is getting mysteriously disrupted. This starts small; upon waking up underground, their skin seems strangely stuck together, but they separate without major issues. However, the new permeable layer between them extends to a new, symbiotic psychological bond which both would rather was not there, and it’s soon clear that the quick separation they managed the first time will not happen so easily again.
Whilst Together runs us through large chunks of its key plot points very quickly, it doesn’t feel like this detracts from the development of a similar thing taking place between its key players because we still take a reasonable, practical amount of time getting to know Tim and Millie – nice, mismatched, fallible, with a troubled relationship offering enough pre-existing complications to match the clearly signposted, incoming ones. Furthermore, the film has a number of interesting, compellingly unpleasant possibilities to offer – all conveyed via an easy-going, increasingly humorous and knowing script, which makes all the difference. It also shows a good sense of what’s behind modern relationship breakdown vs relationship expectations, turning the lexical field of relationships to bleakly funny effect – we get to think all about ideas like ‘splitting’, ‘completing each other’ and of course, how ‘two become one’. Sure, there are some less plausible decisions along the way, but we’re ready for things to get disgustingly literal. If this necessitates a couple of Chekov’s guns, then so be it: it’s more than forgivable. As an audience, it feels like being in on an awful incoming punchline, even before the joke has been fully unfolded. Nice incidental use of a rat king, by the way.
There are undoubtedly shades of other body horror films in Together, and writer/director Michael Shanks no doubt knows just what he’s doing with a few nods here and there, though some other, perhaps less-known titles spring to mind here too: there’s a dash of Honeymoon in the whole mental/physical relationship breakdown aspect, and a bit of Jug Face in the (largely unspoken) pseudo-religion plot point, which, by the way, holds onto a lot of its secrets, though at no great detriment to the character-focused whole. It isn’t as obviously serious as any of the titles already mentioned, however, and in fact becomes funnier and funnier as it goes along – which may or may not work for all viewers, as it feels to an extent like a tonal shift. If things feel gallingly defeatist in key aspects – the ultimate sunk cost fallacy – then regardless, Together‘s detail-heavy body horror does its best work when it focuses on the minutiae, moving deftly into a final act which, to put it bluntly, kicks up a gear. The film works well on symbolic as well as more outré terms, and it still feels like grimly good fun, too.
Together (2025) is available to watch now.