05 Jun REVIEW – ‘Together’ is a gnarly, inventive, and unexpectedly moving tale about toxic love
There is something darkly beautiful about horror that commits to its metaphor so completely that it becomes absurd. Together, the debut feature film from Australian writer/director Michael Shanks, is nothing if not fully committed. What starts as a sharply observed domestic drama about a couple struggling with their future soon melts, drips, and mutates into a gnarly, inventive, and unexpectedly moving tale about toxic love, the follies of codependency, and the slippery definition of self when living in someone else’s orbit.
In its best moments, it feels like a lost Cronenberg-Sarah Polley collaboration, delighting in the texture of rot and tenderness in equal measure. There is body horror, yes, and yes, there is folk horror, too, but underneath the slime and snarls, there’s a very human story about what we owe the people we love and how far we’ll go to keep a connection alive, no matter how grotesque the cost. Together is a pertinent romance. It’s also a grotesque nightmare. And a reminder that sometimes love ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Millie and Tim (real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco) are at a crossroads. Burnt out from the city, they move to a small, quiet town so Millie can take a new job as a teacher. It’s supposed to be a fresh start, but from the first scene, we can tell things are brittle between them. Tim is a struggling musician who never quite got off the ground. Millie is holding onto some unspoken grief. They love each other, certainly, but the equilibrium is off.
The move is a band-aid on a larger wound neither of them wants to talk about. But they try. They unpack. They cook together. They walk in the woods. And in one of those long, thoughtful walks that feel like an effort to salvage intimacy, they come across a cave. That cave, gnarled and pulsing with an unnatural kind of beauty, becomes the portal to something ancient and terrifying. When Millie and Tim fall inside, they emerge not just wounded but irrevocably changed.
Their bodies begin to rebel, to merge, to fuse in ways that feel mythic and microbial all at once. Soon, they cannot be apart. Physical distance causes real pain, then injury, then worse. They are bound, quite literally, and the longer they stay fused, the more indistinct their boundaries become. Body parts entwine. Skin softens and merges. And emotional dynamics that were once abstract, like her martyrdom and his neediness, manifest in squelching, physiological ways. What starts as a metaphor quickly becomes their new reality. Their relationship is now a prison. Or maybe a womb. Or maybe both.
What makes Together sing is its total lack of hesitation. Shanks directs with clarity and confidence, balancing the grotesque with the grounded. He understands that horror works best when it’s rooted in the ordinary, and he never loses sight of that. Even as things spiral into madness, the film keeps its focus tight on Millie and Tim. This is not a world-ending horror. This is a deeply personal apocalypse, and that intimacy makes the horror more effective. The house they live in is warmly lit, full of cozy wood tones and leafy wallpaper. The horror is invasive, not external. It creeps in around the edges of the mundane. Toothbrushes. Soup spoons. The way someone leaves their socks on the floor. The friction of familiarity. The camera lingers on these small things and finds menace in them, turning domestic life into something uncanny and wet.
Brie and Franco are unsurprisingly terrific together. Brief plays Millie with a kind of weary determination, a woman trying to keep things normal even as her body betrays her. There’s a lot of pain in her performance, but also a quiet hopefulness. She captures Millie’s mounting exhaustion and yearning for emotional reciprocity with a naturalism that feels heartbreakingly grounded. There’s a quiet desperation in the way she tries to hold the relationship together, clinging to routine and optimism even as the cracks widen and her passive-aggressive nature becomes more uncomfortably pronounced. Whether she’s consoling Tim, confronting him, or reacting in stunned horror to their shared transformation, Brie radiates warmth, fear, and frustration in equal measure.
Franco, who often gets dismissed as a comic lightweight, digs deep here and finds something raw. Tim is not an easy character to like. And you’re not entirely supposed to. He’s petulant, insecure, and clingy, but Franco imbues him with real and brooding vulnerability that elevates the character beyond a stock man-child archetype. Franco leans into Tim’s emotional paralysis with thoughtful restraint, showing us someone desperate to feel useful yet unsure how. His scenes of physical distress are intense, but it’s in the quieter, emotionally jagged moments that his performance truly shines. He threads the line between self-pity and self-awareness with surprising poignancy.
The chemistry between them, bolstered by their real-life marriage, makes the more extreme sequences feel strangely tender. They’re trapped, yes, but there’s love here. Twisted, sure, but not insincere. Brie and Franco craft a lived-in connection that feels equal parts tender and turbulent. Their off-screen partnership adds layers of authenticity to each awkward silence and loaded glance, making their characters’ emotional entanglement as believable as their physical one. Whether they’re locked in an argument or clumsily trying to reconnect, there’s a raw familiarity between them that deepens the film’s emotional stakes. Their shared scenes pulse with tension, humour, and heartbreak, grounding the horror in something deeply human and painfully relatable.
Visually, the film is a feast of textures. The makeup and practical effects are gooey, inventive, and strangely beautiful. This is not all sleek, digital body horror. This is old-school, glistening, latex-and-gore horror. You can feel the wetness. You can smell the mildew. The transformations that Millie and Tim undergo are not clean. They’re ragged and erratic, and the film lingers on their messiness. It’s gross, yes, but also weirdly tender. Together is constantly asking you to sit with the discomfort of watching people hurt and need each other, sometimes at the same time.
Tonally, the film has a pitch-black sense of humour that works more often than not. There are absurd moments, some of them bordering on slapstick, that offer a welcome release from the intensity. Shanks creates numerous scenes that carefully walk the line between grotesque and hilarious with astonishing precision. These moments of levity don’t deflate the tension; they sharpen it. By reminding us of the absurdity of the situation, Shanks allows the audience to exhale…only to twist the knife again in the next scene.
But for all its brilliance, Together isn’t immune to flaws. Structurally, the film begins to sag slightly in the middle act. After the initial horror sets in and the premise becomes clear, the script circles the same emotional beats a few too many times. There’s a sense that the metaphor is being explained and reiterated rather than deepened. We know Millie and Tim are bound together. We know it’s destroying them. But the story stalls slightly before figuring out what to do with that knowledge. There’s a subplot involving one of Claire’s colleagues (Damon Herriman) that promises some world-building or deeper mythology but never feels fully explored. It’s not ruinous, but it does disrupt the film’s emotional rhythm.
The ending, too, will likely divide audiences. Without spoiling anything, it’s safe to say that the resolution is a choice and a half, maybe a frustrating one. It leans more into the symbolic than the narrative, and some viewers may find it unsatisfying. Personally, I’m erring on this side. Others may see it as the natural culmination of the film’s themes; a final merging of form and function, both metaphorically and physically. You have to admire Shanks’ commitment to emotional logic over plot logic, but it’s undeniably a gamble. Those hoping for clear answers or a traditional catharsis will likely leave unsettled. Then again, that may be the point.
Despite these quibbles, Together works. It works because it understands the genre it’s operating in, and it respects it. It doesn’t mock the tropes of body horror or try to subvert them with irony. It leans in. It sticks to your skin. And it uses its horrors as a lens for something achingly human. At its core, this is a story about the fear of being alone, and the greater fear of what it costs to stay with someone when the connection turns parasitic. In its messiest moments, Together captures the quiet tragedy of people who love each other but don’t know how to be separate. That’s not a new theme, but it’s rarely been expressed in such tactile, visceral terms.
Shanks announces himself as a filmmaker of real vision. His short film work hinted at his interest in transformation and identity, but this is a quantum leap forward. Shanks shows remarkable control over tone, guiding the audience through comedy, horror, romance, and existential dread without ever losing his grip. There’s a confidence to the film’s pacing, its visuals, and its emotional beats that suggests a long career ahead. It’s rare to see a debut so sure of itself, especially one this gooey.
If there’s any justice, Together will find a devoted cult audience. It’s the kind of film that will be dissected in late-night dorm room conversations, argued about on horror forums, and lovingly quoted at midnight screenings. It has the makings of a midnight classic and something equally gross, funny, sad, and deeply specific. It doesn’t try to please everyone. In fact, it seems to relish the discomfort it causes. But for those willing to go on its strange, sticky journey, it offers something rare; a horror film that truly understands love. Not the idealised, cinematic version of love, but the complicated, coiled kind that sticks around long after the thrill is gone.
In the end, Together is more than just a horror film. It’s a body-horror fable, a relationship drama, and a bleak romantic comedy all at once. It’s about being seen and being absorbed. It’s about the terror of closeness and the quiet yearning that drives us into each other’s arms, no matter how sharp the teeth inside. It’s about Millie and Tim, sure. But it’s also about us. The things we endure. The things we cling to. The things we become when we forget where we end and someone else begins. And in that sense, Together is a film that lingers. Like a bruise. Like a rash. Like a hand you can’t quite let go of, even when you know you probably should.
Distributor: Kismet Movies
Cast: Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Damon Herriman, Mia Morrissey, Jack Kenny
Director: Michael Shanks
Producers: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Mike Cowap, Andrew Mittman, Erik Feig, Max Silva, Julia Hammer, Tim Headington
Screenplay: Michael Shanks
Cinematography: Germain McMicking
Production Design: Nicholas Dare
Costume Design: Maria Pattison
Editor: Sean Lahiff
Music: Cornel Wilczek
Running Time: 102 minutes
Release Date: 31st July 2025 (Australia)