Together

When Millie (Alison Brie) accepts a teaching job in the country, she and her long time partner Tim (Dave Franco) throw a party to say goodbye to the city, but when Millie chooses the moment to propose in front of their assembled friends, Tim's awkward pause makes everyone uncomfortable. Things don't get better after the move, Tim's inability to drive causing him to say he feels trapped and Millie begins to question whether they should really be "Together."

Laura's Review: B-

Writer/director Michael Shanks made a big splash at this year's Sundance Film Festival when his feature filmmaking debut sparked a bidding war.  Married costars Brie and Franco, who also produced, have a lot of sticky fun in what must be the first body horror film about romantic commitment, but the incorporation of the Greek mythology behind their predicament is on shakier ground. (The couple filmed an introduction which plays before the movie, seated side by side each holding a large rat.)

Before they've even left the city we learn from a conversation Millie has with a friend that the relationship with Tim has been sexless for quite some time, and yet she finds him going through record albums in order to play her favorite Spice Girls album, an endearing gesture. We'll also learn during this scene that he is troubled, presumably due to something involving his parents, when he finds some random snapshots in the box. In their new country home, Tim is preoccupied with the music career which still hasn't taken off while Millie finds an enthusiastic greeting from colleague Jamie (Damon Herriman, "The Nightingale," "Better Man"), who tells her he's their neighbor and recommends the hiking trails in the woods around their home. In an effort to atone for his behavior, Tim agrees to go on a hike, but the couple get lost, it begins to pour and Tim falls through the ground into an underground cave containing a large bell with wooden structures resembling church pews embedded in its walls. In attempting to pull him out, Millie falls in too. Notably, the first thing Tim worries about is his cell phone because all his demoes are on it. After assuring him she is fine (with more than a hint of sarcasm), Millie inform him she has no reception on hers.

We've actually seen this cave in the film's opening moments when two dogs drank from the round pool within it - with disastrous consequences. So, of course these two immediately complain of thirst and Tim dares to drink from the same source, declaring it safe. Once they get out, though, Tim appears sickly and when Millie leaves to buy groceries, he is slammed about their shower as if magnetically attached to her every turn on the road. He has bizarre nightmares imagining his parents at the end of their bed and, after Millie drops him off at the train station for a gig back in the city, he is so overcome he races back to her school and has sex with her in a stall in the boys' bathroom from which they have trouble disengaging. Tim becomes obsessed with a couple who disappeared while hiking in the area and goes to see a doctor, who connects his problems to his mother's delusions (a creepy revelation) but prescribes diazepam as a muscle relaxant. Then Millie begins to experience the same symptoms.

While at one point Jamie explains Plato's theory about man having two heads and four arms and legs until he was split by Zeus, Shanks actually goes in the opposite direction, Tim and Millie's bodies attempting to merge into one. There is also a subplot about rats nesting in light fixtures, producing a terrible odor, which appears to serve no purpose other than the general ick factor Shanks is going for. He does get deep into relationship issues though, like how resentments can build over time even if two people genuinely love each other or how fear of being alone can lead to complacency. And considering "Together" is a body horror film, it ends on a surprisingly romantic note, then caps that with a fun coda, cinematographer Germain McMicking ("Nitram") changing a scene with a back and forth pan shot.

It is not surprising that Franco and Brie navigate all the various notes of a marriage including support, desire, insecurity, jealousy and care quite convincingly and Herriman plays a role in bringing some of these out. McMicking leans on the high overhead shots becoming increasingly common in horror these days (see "Heretic," "Bring Her Back") while also getting in very close for the film's grislier aspects. Special effects do the job without being particularly groundbreaking. Cornel Wilczek's ("Talk to Me," "Bring Her Back") score sets the tone with a downward spiral of moaning strings.

Neon releases "Together" in theaters on  7/30/25.