‘Together’ Review: Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s Bonkers Body Horror Romp Twists Itself Into Knots

“Together” combines the awkward experience of being in the room as a couple fights in front of you with a bold body horror premise that teeters just on the edge of being too cute by half. It begins like it’s riffing on the classic “The Thing” before settling into something closer to nightmarish slapstick comedy — like the less creative though still plenty committed inverse of “The Substance,” with plenty of ridiculous scenarios. Unfortunately, it never quite finds a consistently scary, let alone thoughtful, edge to use to cut deeper.

The film’s got a charming cast in the real-life husband and wife duo Dave Franco and Alison Brie as well as a more chaotic comedy-horror sensibility where it’s at its strongest. When the very film itself threatens to come apart — including as it nearly undercuts the whole thing in the end — the parts that stick with you stem from the fleshy effects and the squelching sounds emanating from the body horror.

This ensures that “Together,” while it pales in comparison to other more inventive body horror, is able to use this command of craft to hold you close even as it also does quite a bit to make you want to look away. If you keep looking, you’ll see a familiar film about the co-dependency that can threaten to end relationships as the story follows an unwitting couple who discovers something underground outside their remote home that will forever alter their lives, the chemistry of their bodies and the fragile relationship they’ve built together. What shape, or shapes, this takes is best left to the watching so as not to spoil any of the gleeful gore it creates. What can be said is that the film is often playful, yet still fleeting on the whole. 

“Together” premiered Sunday at Sundance, and while it isn’t the most gruesome film at the festival, it still finds plenty of gory pleasure in how it runs with the premise about a couple finding themselves drawn to each other in ways they’ve never experienced before. The emotional thrust involves Millie (Brie) trying to get through to her deadbeat boyfriend Tim (Franco) and work things out after their relationship has essentially stalled out. This, and a new teaching job for her, is the whole reason they’re moving, but this is far less interesting than how writer/director Michael Shanks uses the flimsy narrative to throw the couple around every which way in their new home. It’s all about seeing how far he’ll take it and what a joy it is when he gives himself room to let loose.  

This is first felt via a cleverly constructed and crushing sequence in a shower that crosscuts between the two of them. It reveals how their very motions are being manipulated by something other than their consciousness. From there forward, “Together” plays as a horror roller coaster ride where the scenes of the couple trying to work together to battle what is taking them over are thrilling and the in-between bits far less so. Thankfully, even when sudden exposition about past trauma lands clunkily, the rest of the film remains light on its feet and properly fun as we observe the couple being tormented by whatever is drawing their corporeal forms together.

“Together” is at its best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The highlight is the horror shenanigans rather than the relationship story which, if you think about it even a little bit, starts to feel half-baked and contradictory in the closing stretch.

One could generously say Shanks is perhaps trying to express how many monogamous relationships have some degree of co-dependency as their core and that intimacy requires compassionate compromise that may result in losing some of your independence.

All of the gory elements are terrific, with the moments where everything gets turned up to 11 cutting to the bone, though it’s hard to shake how little it leaves a mark elsewhere. “Together” may tear apart the body in glorious fashion, but its ideas never cut to the soul. 

“Together” is a sales title at Sundance. 

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