‘Together’: Sundance Review

Dir/scr: Michael Shanks. Australia/US. 2025. 101mins

Viewers who have ever been in a relationship with someone who was a little too clingy should sympathise — and squirm — during writer-director Michael Shanks’ feature debut, a horror-comedy that works better the more twisted and stomach-churning it becomes. Together stars real-life wife and husband Alison Brie and Dave Franco as a stagnant couple who are exposed to a strange substance that creates a disturbingly powerful magnetic attraction between them. (Literally, they have a difficult time not getting stuck together.)

A date night prospect for couples with a demented sense of humour

The metaphors in this absurdist slice of body-horror couldn’t be less subtle, and in the early going the obviousness of the story’s themes threaten to undermine the potential suspense. Eventually, though, Together comes together, in large part thanks to the nicely comic lead performances.

Premiering in Sundance’s Midnight section, this crowd-pleasing picture will appeal to genre fans, especially those who prefer their horror amusingly (and sometimes nauseatingly) over the top. Brie and Franco, who also serve as producers, lend star power, and the film’s catchy conceit could make this a fun date-night prospect for couples with a demented sense of humour.

In Together’s opening scenes, dedicated grade-school teacher Millie (Brie) and her flailing musician boyfriend Tim (Franco) are about to move out to the country for her new job, a sacrifice Tim is reluctantly making for her. They have been together a long time, and their sex life has vanished. Millie is beginning to resent her boyfriend’s childish focus on his unrealistic rock ‘n’ roll dreams. One day while hiking in the nearby woods, they fall into a crevasse and are trapped. Desperately thirsty, Tim drinks from a strange pool of water, and when they manage to make their way back home, he keeps getting glued to Millie whenever they  touch.

As one might surmise, Shanks has set up this horror scenario to be a wry commentary on co-dependency, transforming Tim’s neediness into a bizarre physical malady. But the problem involves more than just their bodies touching — when Millie drives away from the house by herself, Tim involuntarily moves in the direction in which she’s driving, almost as if she’s controlling him remotely. At first, only Tim experiences this weird phenomenon, but eventually Millie also contracts the illness, forcing them to work together as a couple in a way they haven’t in years.

The screenplay frequently suffers from questionable leaps of logic in order to ratchet up the suspense. Too often in the film’s early reels, Tim or Millie will act foolishly or out of character, which undercuts the horror of Tim’s inexplicable condition. Tthis tendency decreases in Together’s much-stronger second half. where Shanks takes bigger risks and amplifies the dark humour. The strategy first pays off during a memorable scene in which the couple have a quickie in the bathroom at Millie’s school, where the aftermath results in one of the best (and most painful) slapstick sex jokes since There’s Something About Mary. That laugh-out-loud set piece sets the tone for everything that follows — Together stops focusing so much on its trite themes and, instead, delivers several sequences of gross-out body-horror that are consistently funny because of how straight-faced Brie and Franco play these ridiculous situations.

Franco portrays a floundering, insecure beta male who feels that his successful girlfriend calls the shots in their relationship. His goofball energy proves essential in adding irreverent humour to Together’s more gruesome moments. By comparison, Millie is grounded and responsible, quickly losing interest in her immature boyfriend, and Brie finds some emotional shading for a woman who is starting to realise that she and her true love have drifted apart. The actors’ on-screen rapport is sweet and loving, and they lean into deadpan once Together gets bloodier and increasingly more outrageous.

As is often the case with horror films involving supernatural occurrences, Together stumbles a bit when explaining precisely what is going on. The reveals are both convoluted and unsatisfying, but by that point, audiences probably won’t care so much about a wobbly plot that is mostly an excuse to put Millie and Tim through the wringer of shocks and scares. For a presumably low-budget project, the effects and makeup work are compelling, not to mention disgusting. And although Together ultimately does not have much that’s new to say about long-term commitment, Shanks and his cast land on an ending that is clever and wise about the challenges of calling it quits. As the film suggests, sometimes it’s best for couples to just stick together.