Together is for lovers with strong stomachs

Millie and Tim embark on an ill-planned hike that leads them to their overnight entrapment in a mysterious cavern during a rainstorm—a cavern that looks, unsettlingly, like a church which has sunken into the earth. Out of water and resigned to waiting the storm out, Tim offers the last of his thermos to Millie and, in an all-timer dunce move, happily swills from a pool of water that sits undisturbed in the mysterious cavern. When the couple wakes, they discover that their legs are bonded by a sticky substance that rips their flesh when broken apart. 

This predicament is foreshadowed a bit too obviously earlier in the film, and it’s fairly easy to track where Together is going as the story unfolds, but the journey getting there is fun. Where Tim once felt pulled away from Millie, now the opposite holds true; his body seems ceaselessly and perilously drawn to hers, becoming weak, desperate, and insatiable for her touch when their proximity proves too great. After neglecting Millie to practice for her brother’s gig, Tim bails on the show entirely when his desire becomes unbearable, leading to an excruciating sex scene foretold by the aforementioned fleshy superglue. Then their roles are suddenly reversed: It’s Tim who now yearns for Millie while Millie drifts further away, unnerved by Tim’s behavior and concerned that his family history of mental illness may finally be rearing its head.

This running mental illness theme, along with a few other additives, feels like one of many obligatory American horror motifs which keeps Together out of arm’s reach of being truly great. Once Together‘s story becomes clear, with familiar signposts dotted along its path like the cultist bells leading to the sunken cave, there is little room for surprise or finesse outside of the actual horror set pieces—which do indeed deliver. That great, genuinely erotic sex scene is preceded by a disconcerting nightmare sequence and followed by at least one monstrous creature entirely realized through prosthetics. Shanks’ and his VFX teams’ embrace of practical, tactile effects helps uplift a film that might otherwise look rote. And Brie and Franco’s performances further elevate the material, overwhelmingly selling the tumult, and romance, of their characters, whose dormant passion aches underneath the passage of time and obfuscation of individuality. 

The fear of losing oneself to a long-term relationship and losing the relationship is an unpretentious one; spending such a prolonged time with one person can breed resentment and create questions of whether the pairing endures only because it’s what they are used to. That the cure could be a literal melding of body and spirit isn’t to say that couples must pander to the most toxic parts of dependency; rather, it’s that a true partnership involves two people not losing themselves to each other, but finding themselves in each other—realizing their fullest selves through their shared affection. The profound depth of feeling generated by Brie and Franco in the midst of this genre film, one perhaps unattainable if they weren’t also married in real life, gives Together a real shot as the greatest romance of the year, even if it’s also a film that happens to feature a motorized, saw-toothed blade slicing through mutated flesh. It takes more than gore to undermine the sensation of being so in love with someone that you want to get inside their skin.

Director: Michael Shanks
Writer: Michael Shanks
Starring: Dave Franco, Alison Brie
Release Date: July 30, 2025