Together: Movie Review

Cast: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman
Director: Michael Shanks

Michael Shanks' body horror thriller Together may go for the shock factor, but there is more devastation to be found in the ripples between a long-term couple facing the consequences of relationship indifference.

Brie and Franco are Millie and Tim, a pair who've been together for a while, but whose lives as a couple have hit a rut. Millie's just got a new teaching job requiring her to move to the country, something which permanent manchild Tim isn't wild about.

While he's continually chasing a musical career and traumatised by the death of his mentally ill parents, he's stuck in the not knowing what he wants, a trait that's less than endearing to his partner who, in the movie's first awkward scene, proposes to him in front of their friendship group at a farewell party.

Needless to say, it doesn't go well and Tim's distance from Millie merely makes things harder when they move. Setting off on a hike, the pair soon get lost and in a mysterious cave with a well, church pews and a bell - despite their resistance to the idea they end up drinking the water to get through the night.

But the day after, things get weird between the pair of them when they wake up stuck together...

Together is supposed to be about co-dependency, but thanks to Franco and Brie's lived-in relationship vibe, it ends up more of a film about a relationship teetering on the edge that throws in some supernatural elements and a garble of last act exposition.

From jump scares to barbs, throwaway comedy lines and disorienting the visuals, the movie makes great fist of its awkwardness - but never at the expense of the central two performances. Herriman works as an occasional interjecting side character, yet in truth, this belongs squarely to Brie and Franco.

With Shanks' slow-drawing out of events and atmospheric pacing, the film gradually heads for full-on body horror mode - some of which is more successful than other parts, yet it never betrays its central conceit. 

Namely that being part of a couple can be all-enveloping whether you want it too or not. Together may not really offer new insight into this revelation, but it does prove to be a riotously uncomfortable time getting there.