Here's a challenge for those in enduring partnerships who enjoy horror films: Settle in with your significant other and view Together. This 2025 indie hit just made its online premiere via Hulu. At first glance, it could look like conventional body horror, but inside Together exists a profound meditation about how we choose to love each other.
A Directorial Debut Exploring Relationship Dynamics
Together marks the debut feature-length film for filmmaker Michael Shanks. It features the real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple named Tim and Millie, partners that have remained a couple for a decade. Having wed in reality in 2017, Franco and Brie bring a special spark to their portrayals, skillfully embodying both the good and bad of a long-term relationship.
The narrative begins when the couple move from the urban environment to the countryside for Millie’s job. A familiar narrative setup, sure, but that’s primarily where the conventions end. Together becomes as much a deep dive into the psyche of the pair’s relationship as it is a film about physical terror.
A Paranormal Spark
While trekking near their new home, a violent storm occurs, and the two discover an hole in the earth. After being trapped overnight there and eventually escaping, a strange force begins influencing the pair. This force compels a paranormal intimacy between them that goes well past simple connection.
The whole movie is a slow burn horror experience, weaving in bits of fever-dream horrors, unsettling (but tastefully done) body horror, and genuinely funny exchanges (sometimes during something grotesque). Shanks skillfully blends these components seamlessly and presents them in a gradually swelling sense of impending doom.
Complex Characterizations
A significant portion of Together is solely Brie and Franco, and they masterfully render numerous complexities to the partnership at the film's core. Millie’s confidence and feeling of intimacy is deteriorating due to a lack of intimacy. Her unspoken irritation of Tim for his unwillingness to focus on anything other than his failing musical ambitions inexorably rises.
Conversely, Tim experiences isolation and isolated by Millie, who’s the impetus they’ve relocated rural and removed from his network of friends. He dreads the concept of totally forfeiting his individual identity in his partner. This fear is amplified by the circumstance he lacks a driver's license and relies on Millie for mobility.
The director's cleverest decision in Together refrains from painting either of his characters the definite antagonist.
The couple grapple with the type of challenges that arise in long-term unions a decade in. Fundamentally, they still love one another. They still laugh together, comfort one another, and open up at times. But below this facade, there’s an inescapable undercurrent of doubt about their relationship.
Allegory and Meaning
While the paranormal elements in Together act as a metaphor for these anxieties of unhealthy attachment and fully committing to another person, the symbolism never feels clumsy or heavy-handed. Instead, these visceral horror elements offer a brilliant analogue to the interpersonal storytelling. Both the frights and the fights enhance each other in a mutually beneficial way.
A Divisive Ending
Together’s conclusion, which is best experienced firsthand, has created disagreement on the movie's final takeaway about unhealthy partnerships. Accounts suggest that those not in relationships have understood the narrative as a strong argument for remaining unattached. On the other hand, some couples having disagreements found that the film actually helped them make up.
Whether you’re single or coupled up, your own reaction could act as a revealing measure of how you perceive partnership. Will the conclusion inspire anxiety and horror, or a uplifting feeling of optimism? Will you recognize your own traits in one of the characters and yell at the screen, or simply turn to your partner and say, “I’d do that for you”?
No matter your reaction, Together is an exploration you can experience right now.
Together is currently playing on Hulu's platform at present.
