by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman, Mia Morrissey, Jack Kenny, Sunny S. Walia, Karl Richmond
Intro:
… raw and emotionally honest at the same time as being brittle and snarky, a truly modern feeling horror film that delves into its themes with a fearless alacrity.
Relationships can be scary, particularly for the 30s and under. The idea of fully committing to another human being, sharing your life with an entirely separate organism and losing your once prized independence is a daunting notion. And if you get too close, become fully immersed in this other, will you even remember who you used to be anymore? These lofty concepts are at the very core of Together, a stylish and stomach-churning body horror flick from first time writer/director, Michael Shanks, and starring real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco.
And it’s quite something, readers. It’s quite… something.
Together tells the tale of longtime partners Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie). When we meet the pair, they’re about to take the plunge on their latest adventure: moving to the country for Millie’s work. Millie’s a teacher, you see, whereas ol’ mate Tim is a struggling musician (is there any other kind?) and the move represents a seismic shift in their dynamic. Tension mounts as Tim’s indecisiveness and lack of drive (and libido) starts to wear on Millie. Things come to a head after they get lost in the nearby woods and drink from a strange, otherworldly spring. They begin to experience changes, a melding of flesh and intellect and the couple finds they are drawn to each other in unexpected and disturbingly… squishy ways.
Together works on a bunch of levels. Firstly, the relationship between Tim and Millie is really well-observed. This feels like a real life longterm couple, for good and ill, and the chemistry between Franco and Brie adds a lot to the believability and incisive, prickly humour. The horror elements too, particularly Tim’s trauma from a recent grisly family tragedy, are extremely skilfully executed, enough to jolt even the most jaded of genre fans out of their seen-it-all-before-stupor. And when the film finally delivers on the body horror shenanigans, it does so deftly and memorably.
Performances are uniformly great, with the main duo doing some of the best work of their respective careers and Damon Herriman once again proving that he can do so much with a relatively small role. However, the real star here is the script and direction from Shanks. This is such a confident, personal debut, raw and emotionally honest at the same time as being brittle and snarky, a truly modern feeling horror film that delves into its themes with a fearless alacrity. There’s nothing safe about this movie, nothing generic or rote, and that’s a reason for celebration.
While it never approaches the jaw-dropping audacity of The Substance, Together absolutely manages to stand on its own (sticky) feet as a more personal, emotionally satisfying film than Coralie Fargeat’s classic from last year. It’s a slowburn exploration of some anxiety-inducing themes and concepts but also manages to be memorable, tense and ultimately oddly romantic… in a gloopy, twisted kind of way.
Together is a superior horror film in a year that’s already had a bunch of them. Probs not a great idea for a first date movie though, eh.
