Here's a challenge for those in enduring partnerships who are fans of the horror genre: Get comfortable with your loved one and watch Together. This 2025 indie hit has now made its online premiere on Hulu. On the surface, it could look like conventional body horror, but inside Together lies a deep contemplation about the ways we decide to love each other.
A Directorial Debut Delving into Partnership Complexities
Together is the first full-length movie for filmmaker Michael Shanks. It showcases actors Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Millie and Tim, an unmarried couple that have been together for a decade. Having wed in real life in 2017, the actors contribute a particular energy to their roles, masterfully depicting both the strengths and weaknesses of a enduring union.
The narrative commences when the couple relocate from the big city to the country for Millie’s job. A familiar narrative setup, of course, but that’s largely where the cliches conclude. Together becomes as much a examination of mental states of the partnership as it is a film about physical terror.
A Paranormal Spark
While hiking near their country house, a tempest descends, and the protagonists discover an underground cave. After a night spent there and finally finding a way out, a mysterious influence takes hold of the duo. This force compels a paranormal intimacy between them that goes far beyond simple connection.
The whole movie is a methodically building fright fest, weaving in moments of dreamlike terrors, gross (but never too gross) biological grotesqueries, and genuinely funny exchanges (sometimes amidst something disturbing). Shanks orchestrates these parts expertly and delivers them in a gradually swelling sense of impending doom.
Complex Characterizations
A great deal of Together is only Brie and Franco, and they skillfully illustrate numerous complexities to the characters’ relationship. Millie’s confidence and sense of connection is suffering due to a distance. Her underlying frustration of Tim for his reluctance to pursue anything but his struggling artistic pursuits inexorably rises.
Conversely, Tim experiences isolation and isolated by Millie, who’s the reason they’ve relocated rural and far away from his social circle. He dreads the concept of totally forfeiting his individual identity in another person. This fear is amplified by the reality he lacks a driver's license and relies on Millie for transportation.
The film's most intelligent aspect in this movie refrains from painting one partner or the other the definite antagonist.
Both characters confront the kind of problems that come with most partnerships a decade in. At their core, they continue to care for one another. They find humor with each other, comfort one another, and share intimately at times. But under the surface, there’s an persistent feeling of questioning about their future together.
Allegory and Meaning
While the paranormal elements in Together symbolize these anxieties of unhealthy attachment and giving oneself over to another person, the metaphor never feels hamfisted or heavy-handed. Instead, these more disturbing, unsettling scenes offer a ideal counterpart to the interpersonal storytelling. Both the supernatural and the personal enhance each other in a mutually beneficial way.
A Controversial Conclusion
Together’s final act, which won’t be spoiled here, has left audiences divided on the story's concluding statement about codependent relationships. It has been said that unattached audience members have seen the movie as a strong argument for remaining unattached. Conversely, certain partners having disagreements found that the film ended up guiding them to reconcile.
Regardless of your relationship status, your own response could function as a great barometer of how you think about commitment. Will the finale inspire anxiety and horror, or a heartwarming sense of hope? Will you see yourself in Tim or Millie and feel frustration, or simply turn to your other half and state, “I’d do that for you”?
Regardless of the outcome, Together is an experiment you can undertake today.
Together is streaming on Hulu now.
