Here's a challenge for partners in committed relationships who enjoy scary movies: Sit down with your loved one and watch Together. The 2025 indie hit has now made its launch on a streaming platform via Hulu. On the surface, it could look like standard biological terror, but inside Together resides a intense examination about our choices in loving each other.
A Directorial Debut Exploring The Nuances of Love
Together is the debut feature-length film for filmmaker Michael Shanks. It features Dave Franco and Alison Brie as Tim and Millie, partners that have been together for ten years. Married in real life in 2017, Franco and Brie bring a special spark to their characters, expertly portraying both the strengths and weaknesses of a long-term relationship.
The story begins when Tim and Millie move from the big city to the country for professional reasons. A familiar plot device, admittedly, but that’s largely where the cliches cease. Together becomes as much a examination of mental states of the pair’s relationship as it is a film about physical terror.
A Paranormal Spark
While hiking near their country house, a tempest descends, and the protagonists discover an underground cave. After being trapped overnight there and eventually escaping, a mysterious influence starts to affect the pair. This force creates a paranormal intimacy between them that goes well past simple connection.
The entire film is a slow burn of scares, weaving in moments of fever-dream horrors, unsettling (but tastefully done) body horror, and genuinely funny dialogue (sometimes amidst something horrific). Shanks skillfully blends these components expertly and delivers them in a gradually swelling aura of dread.
Complex Characterizations
A significant portion of Together is only Brie and Franco, and they masterfully render manifold depths to the partnership at the film's core. Her self-assurance and sense of connection is deteriorating due to a lack of intimacy. Her underlying frustration of Tim for his hesitance to chase only his floundering music career slowly bubbles to the surface.
Tim, on the other hand feels trapped and isolated by Millie, who’s the impetus they’ve relocated rural and far away from his network of friends. He is terrified of the idea of utterly sacrificing his sense of self in his partner. This fear is intensified by the fact he does not operate a vehicle and relies on Millie for getting around.
The director's cleverest decision is that he avoids making one partner or the other the obvious villain.
Tim and Millie face the kind of problems that arise in long-term unions a decade in. Deep down, they have affection for each other. They still laugh together, comfort one another, and share intimately at times. But below this facade, there’s an persistent undercurrent of doubt about their bond.
Allegory and Meaning
While the supernatural forces in Together act as a metaphor for these anxieties of unhealthy attachment and totally devoting oneself to another person, the metaphor avoids being hamfisted or self-important. Instead, these more disturbing, unsettling scenes offer a brilliant analogue to the relationship narrative. Both the frights and the fights work together in a mutually beneficial way.
A Controversial Conclusion
Together’s final act, which is best experienced firsthand, has sparked debate on the film’s ultimate message about codependent relationships. It has been said that single viewers have understood the narrative as a powerful case for avoiding commitment. Conversely, a few pairs who were in conflict found that the film ended up guiding them to reconcile.
Regardless of your relationship status, your own interpretation could act as a revealing measure of how you perceive partnership. Will the finale plant a sense of discomfort and fear, or a heartwarming sense of hope? Will you see yourself in Tim or Millie and scream at your TV, or simply look at your significant other and utter, “I understand that choice”?
No matter your reaction, Together is an test you can experience at this very moment.
Together is currently playing on the streaming service Hulu at present.
