Together

2025

Director: Michael Shanks

Cast: Alison Brie, Dave Franco

Words – Christian Abbott.

Body horror attracts a certain kind of audience member. Few, if any, casually dabble in this highly charged and polarising subgenre. Fewer still would consider it a tenable option for a date movie.
Yet, Together attempts to bridge that gap and fuse two seemingly incompatible sides into a whole. That, in essence, is what theatrical debut filmmaker Michael Shanks is trying to get across; in his own words, it’s a “communal audience experience”.

It follows the real-life married actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a slightly dysfunctional couple that moves to the countryside. Soon after, they encounter a mysterious and Lovecraftian force that finally brings them together.

Wearing its influences on its sleeve, the initiated will kick back and bathe in the film’s gloriously on-the-nose references to everything from John Carpenter to Junji Ito. Almost to its detriment does the film lean into its genre trappings as it clumsily gets the plot into motion.
The first act doesn’t get proceedings off to a good start. Stilted dialogue, familiar tropes, and contrived sequences are all signposted to get the characters into their twisted fate. Still, the chemistry between Franco and Brie pushes the audience onwards; their little glimpses and body language reveal real intimacy, regardless of what the script wants us to believe.

It isn’t until the halfway mark when the narrative finally asserts itself. The laboured setup takes a backseat and the glorious body horror can begin. It’s no surprise that Shanks admitted the ‘hallway scene’ at the heart of the narrative was the one he originally wrote. From this point onwards, there’s a continual escalation as the plot uncoils until its (albeit obvious) satisfying conclusion arrives.

The visuals have an uncomfortable crunchy feel to them, in what Shanks called “dry and painful” rather than the shiny and slimy aesthetics one might expect in The Thing (1982) or The Fly (1986). The blending of real puppets and visual effects delivers this year’s answer to The Substance. While Together never reaches the gory highs of director Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 treat, it certainly sticks a similar landing. When the credits roll, fans of the subgenre will be left smiling all the same.

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