What happens when you’re safely settled into the relationship that you always wanted, but you’re somehow growing apart and alone? That’s the central question at the heart of Michael Shanks’ feature directorial debut, Together, a body horror film that takes the metaphor of codependency and transforms it into something viscerally, grotesquely real. Starring real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, this Cronenbergian nightmare premiered at Sundance in January 2025 to strong buzz before being scooped up by Neon and released to theaters in July, where it grossed $32 million worldwide.
The Setup: A Relationship at a Crossroads
Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) are years into their relationship and facing the familiar strains that come with long-term commitment. Millie has just secured a job teaching elementary school English in the countryside, while Tim, an aspiring musician in his mid-thirties, is still chasing dreams that may never materialize. The cracks in their foundation become painfully visible at their going-away party when Millie proposes to Tim in front of their friends, only to be met with uncomfortable hesitation.
Their move to the country is supposed to be a fresh start, a chance to save some money and maybe salvage their relationship. But isolation has a way of amplifying problems rather than solving them. When the couple encounters a mysterious cave during an exploratory hike, Tim drinks from a questionable well while severely dehydrated. What follows is a supernatural nightmare that literalizes every fear about losing your independence in a relationship.
When Love Gets Under Your Skin
Without spoiling too much, the film’s central horror conceit involves Tim and Millie’s bodies beginning to physically fuse together. What starts as strange occurrences escalates into full-blown body horror as their flesh literally begins to merge. The symbolism is blunt but effective: this couple’s codependency isn’t just emotional anymore. They’re becoming one person whether they like it or not.
The body horror effects range from ingenious to intentionally cheesy, embracing both modern practical effects and the campy fun that used to define the genre. Brie and Franco wore prosthetics that effectively conjoined their arms together for hours on end, resulting in the couple having to use the restroom together. The film also creates a merged version of the characters through sophisticated compositing techniques, blending their faces into a single unsettling visage the crew nicknamed “Tillie.”
Real Chemistry, Real Terror
The casting of Franco and Brie proves essential to the film’s success. Their real-life marriage brings an authenticity to Tim and Millie’s dynamic that would be nearly impossible to fake. When they snipe at each other, it doesn’t feel like movie-cute bickering but rather the kind of button-pushing that comes from actual history together. They know how to hurt each other, how to comfort each other, and crucially, how to make each other laugh even in the most absurd circumstances.
Franco captures Tim’s frustration with his stalled career and fear of commitment with understated precision, while Brie navigates Millie’s oscillation between patience and resentment beautifully. When the body horror kicks into high gear, both actors fully commit to the physical comedy and grotesque situations with admirable fearlessness.
Balancing Horror and Heart
What sets Together apart from pure body horror exercises is its refusal to abandon the emotional core of the story. This isn’t just about watching bodies transform in disturbing ways. It’s about two people grappling with fundamental questions: Are we good for each other? Are we good without each other? Can love survive when you lose yourself in another person?
The film maintains a darkly comic tone throughout, with scenes that will have audiences screaming with equal parts laughter and horror. There’s the bathroom incident where they get stuck together during sex. There’s the moment involving duct tape and a reciprocating saw. And there’s the climactic sequence set to the Spice Girls’ “2 Become 1” that manages to be simultaneously romantic, horrifying, and oddly moving.
Composer Cornel Wilczek explained that the score is built around their romance, creating what’s essentially a love song that gets distorted and reshaped throughout the film, mirroring the physical transformations on screen.
The Deeper Themes
Beneath the gross-out moments and body horror spectacle, Shanks has crafted a surprisingly perceptive commentary on modern relationships. The film explores the millennial fear of commitment, the emotional demands of love, and the challenges of maintaining identity within a partnership. There’s also a fascinating cult backstory involving a New Age group that used the cave’s supernatural properties to literally merge couples together in pursuit of romantic “perfection.”
Damon Herriman delivers a memorably ambiguous performance as Jamie, Millie’s colleague who introduces them to the area and seems to know more than he’s letting on. His character invokes Plato’s concept of love as two halves of a single body searching for each other, lending the film a philosophical dimension that elevates it beyond simple shock value.
Where It Stumbles
Together isn’t perfect. Some viewers will find that the film breaks tension too frequently with humor and romance just when it should be pushing into truly unbearable territory. For hardcore body horror fans expecting something as relentless as Tetsuo or as uncompromising as Possessor, the film’s more approachable tone may feel like it’s pulling its punches. The gore and transformations, while effective, never reach the truly transgressive heights some will be hoping for.
The pacing also occasionally lags in the middle section as the film builds toward its more extreme final act. And while the ambiguous ending works thematically, some viewers will undoubtedly feel unsatisfied by the lack of clear resolution.
Critical and Audience Reception
Critics have been largely positive, with Rotten Tomatoes showing 90% of 239 reviews as favorable. The consensus praises the metatextual casting and describes it as emotionally sticky and memorably gnarly. Metacritic assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, indicating generally favorable reviews.
That said, the film hasn’t been without controversy. A lawsuit was filed alleging copyright infringement of a 2023 film called Better Half, with claims that the concept was pitched to Brie and Franco years earlier. Additionally, the Chinese release was altered to change a same-sex couple to a heterosexual one, resulting in criticism from viewers who saw it as disrespectful.
The Verdict
Together is a confident debut from Michael Shanks that manages to be gross, funny, romantic, and thought-provoking in roughly equal measure. It’s rare to find a horror film that works both as a relationship drama and as a creature feature, but this one pulls it off thanks to committed performances, smart writing, and a willingness to embrace the absurdity of its premise.
The film doesn’t reinvent body horror, but it finds a fresh angle by grounding its transformations in authentic relationship anxieties. It asks what happens when you can’t tell where you end and your partner begins, then answers that question in the most literal way possible. The result is a movie that will make you squirm, laugh, and maybe even tear up as Tim and Millie navigate the horrifying consequences of supernatural codependency.
For couples looking for an unconventional date night movie, Together offers plenty to discuss afterward, assuming you can both handle the sight of people literally stuck together. Just maybe don’t go on a hike afterward.
Best For: Body horror fans who enjoy dark comedy; couples who can laugh at relationship anxieties; fans of Franco and Brie; anyone who thought The Substance was interesting but wanted something more romantic.
Skip If: You want hardcore, unrelenting body horror without comic relief; graphic physical transformations make you genuinely queasy; you prefer your horror without relationship drama.
Rating: 4 out of 5