Together

dir: Michael Shanks

2025

Now this is a bit more my tempo.

This, too, is a film about a couple in danger of tearing each other and themselves apart, but this works far batter, way way better even if it doesn’t have Sir Lord Esquire Benedict Cumberbatch and Academy Award Winner Olivia Colman in the lead roles, unlike the bloody Roses.

In fact, it has Alison Brie and Dave Franco, instead. You could probably not get two actors more opposite than them to the classy Brit thespians of the aforementioned title. Dave Franco is the younger, non-problematic Franco compared to his brother James, who, while a great actor, is also a notorious serial assaulter of women. Alison Brie is, if you like her work, a delight in shows as varied as Mad Men, GLOW, Community and a bunch of films, and yet also an accomplished actor capable of tremendous nuance and complexity in her roles. And she’s pretty fearless.

And Dave Franco… is Dave Franco. You wouldn’t think that they would suit such roles in a keen body horror flick, but they’re perfect for these roles.

Another key difference is that Brie and Franco are married in real life, so when they’re playing a couple in distress, it is somewhat more believable. They’re not playing a couple who have turned murderous due to decades of resentment and generally being very shitty people – they are playing a (younger) couple, despite being in their 40s who have only recently moved to the country, and who don’t seem to be sure of each other even after nearly ten years of being together.

Excruciatingly, Brie’s character Millie gets down on bended knee, for some reason, to propose to Tim when they’re having their hipster abundant going away party with all their friends. He awkwardly demurs yet they still go through with the move. He doesn’t really have a job and doesn’t want to give up his dream of being an unsuccessful musician, whereas she’s a teacher, and has apparently been supporting them both for the longest time.

In a new town, in a small town where they don’t know anyone, they are similarly repelled by and entirely dependent on each other, which creates its own pressures. Couples who spend too much time together, without clear boundaries in their heads, can get confused: Where do you end and I begin? A lack of boundaries, projected harsh boundaries that are too extreme or exclusionary; withholding oneself, depriving the other of what they want or need; relationships are hard, aye?

Well, doesn’t this flick have the perfect allegory for the push and pull, the attraction-repulsion of certain relationships and certain relationship dynamics. Go away / come back, I’m sick of you / can’t stand being away from you, let me go / I must consume you: I’m not going to argue the flick is deep about these things, but it is compelling. It kept me interested, it kept me engaged and amused, and because I’m a sick fuck who was mentally on the level that I think they were aiming for, I found it fucking hilarious in parts and entrancing throughout..

This is horror, make no mistake. There are bucketloads of body horror in this flick, distended unholy images of bodies doing what bodies shouldn’t be able to do, but it’s in the service of something understandable. While what we see is horrifying, the words the couple on the most part are using make sense; they’re things people say to other people they care about. Their fears and doubts, their needs and desires; we all mostly share them. We want companionship, love, not to be alone, but we want space, but not too much space, we want someone who knows us but not so well that we’re predictable and boring to them, we don’t want someone who’s helpless but also not so independent that they don’t need us. These fears and irritations they express, that they play out for our entertainment, they’re mostly universal.

What happens to them, thankfully, is not. The origin of the thing that plagues them doesn’t matter – it doesn’t have to make sense. There is a quizzical backstory that I would argue is unnecessary and a bit belaboured, but it hardly matters. There is a place near where Millie and Tim live. It is underground, and it looks organic, not entirely evil, but not like a place where anything good would come out of. There’s bells everywhere, and bits of building and furniture.

There’s something in the water. If two people, even two dogs consume the water, either the water itself or something in the water compels those two beings to become enmeshed, to have their boundaries loosen, become permeable, until, not inevitably, they join together in the ways that only a horror flick can conjure.

It’s amazing what they do in this flick with practical effects. There’s a lot of latex and prosthetics work, and I am here for it. I have no idea what the budget was on this flick, but I imagine it wasn’t high. Solid effects work really helps when you’re making a body horror kind of flick.

The “real” special effect, though, is just how game Brie and Franco are for this heartfelt nonsense. They just fucking go for it, and it’s a joy to see. The underlying goofiness of what’s happening (I am not at all saying this is a comedy) does not at all detract from the often ghastly tone. There are scenes that are less reliant on special effects, and more reliant on just creating deeply disturbing visuals that, at moments, remind me of how great Talk to Me from a few year’s ago by the Phillipou Brothers was, with such a keen eye and a keener cinematographer.

There’s a scene where Millie, having decided to physically distance herself from Tim, uncontrollably moves towards him regardless of the physical barriers in the way, including a frosted set of glass doors. I found that scene more terrifying than almost every other thing I’ve seen this year, and yet the flick has some other remarkable shots up its sleeve.

Tim independently of whatever’s in the water suffers from panic attacks and anxiety, and some of his most confronting scenes are dreams or panic attacks rendered visually, but that scene where his terrified breathing matches that of the cave itself from where the problematic water emanates is really visually strong. That level of careful crafting abounds in scene construction and set ups throughout the flick, which I applaud.

Maybe it was a bit too literalised. Maybe the whole premise is a little bit too over-explained. Maybe we didn’t totally need the bit with the poor doggoes at the beginning. Maybe we didn’t need the friendly, maybe a bit creepy fellow teacher explaining the entirety of the premise by having the great Damon Herriman relay most of the premise of Aristophane’s speech from Plato’s Symposium, where he theorises that people, once upon a time, had two heads, four legs and four arms, but Zeus, wanting to cripple them, blasted them into halves. And so we yearn for each other, to heal the loss and fundamental lack in ourselves, to make ourselves whole again through co-dependant and sometimes agonising relationships, where the attraction and the repulsion never abate.

How fucking romantic. It helps that it’s all so tongue in cheek. It really helps so much.

I shouldn’t praise the flick too much because it’s going to create expectations which it won’t be able to support. There’s some deliberate cheese in the script, but these pros can sell it. Some of the relationship-flavoured whining we hear them do is meant to sound whiny and tiresome, because these arguments between people in a long term relationship shouldn’t always sound like they’ve been artfully scripted by Edward Albee, Nora Ephron or Shonda Rhimes; occasionally they’re meant to sound mundane, because we’re meant to see ourselves in these mucky mucks.

And what horror to behold, to see us reflected in such goopy eyes. I also can’t get over the fact that this was clearly filmed at least in part in Victoria. I am assuming Michael Shanks, the director, is Australian, but there’s a scene at a station, and while I don’t know where that station is, it’s clearly a V Line train that blasts through that little country station.

How did they entice such talented American megastars to rural Victoria? There’s no way this budget could have afforded to entice them with money. Most celebs won’t go south of Byron Bay, so, yes, I’m going to assume a certain amount of chloroform was involved.

This is one of the keenest and strongest horror flicks I’ve seen this year. One of the best, with two really strong, gnarly performances from two people I wasn’t expecting strong, gnarly performances from.

8 times whenever cults are involved, you know something truly awful is going to happen out of 10

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“Whiskey for the pain!” – what else would it be for - Together

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi600164377/