Together (15)

Musician Tim and teacher Millie are several years into their relationship and contemplating next steps. The couple move to the countryside for Millie to take up a new teaching position and the relationship feels the strain. As a bonding exercise, Tim and Millie hike down a trail near their new home and they fall into sink hole where a mysterious and unnatural force exerts an insidious influence over them and explores how far they are willing to go in the name of love.

LondonNet Film Review

Together (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Mid-1990s girl power balladry provides a disconcertingly cheerful yet creepily effective soundtrack to stomach-churning body horror in Together. Starring real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco, who also take producer credits, writer-director Michael Shanks’ trippy debut feature heads into the woods for an increasingly nasty surprise involving a subterranean pool of water that, when drunk, irresistibly pulls two people towards each other until their bodies physically fuse into one hideously gnarled organism…

The nauseating practical and digital effects begin tamely with the couple’s legs sticking together, as if they have been accidentally superglued at the calves, and quickly escalate in wince-inducing intensity with an impromptu bout of intimacy in a toilet cubicle that visualises, in excruciating detail, how love can tear us apart. The script’s emotionally and physically vulnerable scenarios, laced with morbid humour, require repeated on-screen nudity and are a testament to Brie and Franco’s unflinching trust in each other and their audacious first-time filmmaker. A glorious set piece with a handheld saw-toothed blade almost tipped me over the edge (I had to watch through interlaced fingers) but Shanks goes further, orchestrating a final grand flourish that feels like a reverential nod to some of David Cronenberg’s early work.

Elementary school English teacher Millie (Brie) and musician boyfriend Tim (Franco) prepare to take the next step in their long-term relationship by moving to the countryside so she can pursue an exciting job opportunity and Tim can process the traumatic recent deaths of his parents (Nancy Finn, Mark Robinson). Best friend Cath (Mia Morrissey) openly voices her reservations about Tim but Millie is committed to the relationship and she stages an awkward marriage proposal at their going away party.

Tension is evident in the couple’s new home, exacerbated by a visit from overly friendly neighbour Jamie (Damon Herriman), who is a teacher at Millie’s new school and appears to be flirting with her in from of Tim. To regroup, Tim and Millie hike down a trail near their new home and fall into sink hole. “It feels… crowded,” he observes about the oppressive, subterranean hollow where a mysterious and unnatural force exerts insidious influence over the couple and tests how far Millie and Tim are willing to go in the name of love.

Together is a twisted tale of co-dependency that loses its way in the final stretch as the grotesquerie reaches an inevitable climax. Brie and Franco fling themselves wholeheartedly into the abyss, delivering unerringly committed performances that gleefully smudge the lines between their real-life connection and gory fantasy. Herriman offers tantalising support. Opening up to someone takes on a satisfyingly disgusting new meaning through Shanks’ blood-smeared lens.

– Sarah Lee