We present a challenge for those in enduring partnerships who enjoy scary movies: Get comfortable with your loved one and watch Together. The 2025 indie hit recently had its online premiere via Hulu. On the surface, it may seem like standard biological terror, but within Together lies a intense examination about how we choose to love our partners.
A Debut Feature Exploring Partnership Complexities
Together represents the first full-length movie for director Michael Shanks. It showcases actors Alison Brie and Dave Franco as a couple named Tim and Millie, a pair who are not married that have remained a couple for over ten years. United in marriage in actuality in 2017, Franco and Brie contribute a particular energy to their portrayals, masterfully depicting both the joys and frustrations of a committed partnership.
The story commences when the couple relocate from the metropolis to the rural area for professional reasons. A familiar plot device, admittedly, but that’s largely where the tropes conclude. Together evolves into as much a deep dive into the psyche of the couple's dynamic as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
A Paranormal Spark
While trekking near their country house, a violent storm occurs, and the two fall into an subterranean cavern. After spending the night there and managing to escape, a mysterious influence begins influencing the couple. This force induces a paranormal intimacy between them that goes exceeding typical partnership.
The whole movie is a gradually intensifying horror experience, blending bits of dreamlike terrors, unsettling (but not excessively graphic) biological grotesqueries, and authentically humorous exchanges (sometimes amidst something grotesque). Shanks weaves these elements together neatly and presents them in a gradually swelling aura of dread.
Nuanced Portrayals
A significant portion of Together is exclusively the performances of its stars, and they skillfully illustrate numerous complexities to the characters’ relationship. Millie's sense of self and feeling of intimacy is deteriorating due to a distance. Her subconscious resentment of Tim for his hesitance to chase only his failing musical ambitions inexorably rises.
Conversely, Tim feels trapped and isolated by Millie, who’s the cause they’ve relocated rural and far away from his support system. He is terrified of the idea of completely losing his sense of self in his partner. This fear is intensified by the reality he can’t drive and needs Millie for mobility.
Shanks’ smartest move in Together refrains from painting Tim or Millie the clear bad guy.
The couple grapple with the kind of problems that come with most partnerships a decade in. Deep down, they have affection for each other. They share moments of joy, offer support, and share intimately at times. But below this facade, there’s an persistent undercurrent of doubt about their future together.
Symbolism and Metaphor
While the otherworldly presence in Together represent these fears of codependency and giving oneself over to another person, the allegory avoids being hamfisted or self-important. Instead, these visceral horror elements present a ideal counterpart to the relationship narrative. Both the frights and the fights work together in harmony.
A Debated Finale
Together’s final act, which remains unspoiled, has left audiences divided on the movie's final takeaway about unhealthy partnerships. It has been said that unattached audience members have interpreted the film as a compelling reason for remaining unattached. Meanwhile, a few pairs who were in conflict found that the film ultimately assisted them reconcile.
If you are alone or with a partner, your own interpretation could function as a telling indicator of how you view relationships. Will the ending plant anxiety and horror, or a positive outlook on love? Will you identify in Tim or Millie and feel frustration, or simply turn to your partner and say, “We could get through that together”?
No matter your reaction, Together is an exploration you can undertake today.
Together is streaming on the streaming service Hulu as of this moment.
