Alison Brie And Dave Franco Get Gross In A Body Horror Comedy

There is something undeniably strange about what happens to people in a committed relationship. It’s easy for some form of co-dependency to crop up, and it’s troubling to find your sense of self become so mutable. For those of us watching two people become a couple, it can feel like watching some kind of transformation slowly occur; the person you used to know starts dressing and acting differently, and in some extreme cases, may even begin thinking differently. Although even the healthiest long-term relationship involves some version of codependency, it’s more likely that it happens so gradually and imperceptibly that no one may notice it. However, what if that dependency were to be externalized? What if, for instance, the craving and need you may have to be with your person weren’t just an emotional one, but a physical one?

That’s essentially the premise of “Together,” a new body horror comedy from first time writer and director Michael Shanks. Thanks in large part to the success (not to mention Academy Award nominations) for last year’s “The Substance,” body horror is having a mainstream moment, and that’s likely part of why Neon decided to acquire the film during the Sundance Film Festival this week for distribution in August of this year. That’s not to say “Together” doesn’t succeed on its own merits. Far from it, as the film is loaded with set-pieces that deliver, in large part thanks to the committed work by Dave Franco and Alison Brie. While “Together” may be a little rote and feel like it’s holding back for us gorehound sicko horror freaks, it unquestionably delivers for a general audience, meaning it’s a pretty great gateway horror movie for the uninitiated.

Right from the opening moments, “Together” sets a high bar for itself by homaging a couple of all-timer body horror films. During a search in the woods of an upstate New York small town for a missing hiker couple, a man’s dogs come upon the ruins of an old church that have collapsed into the ground, with a strange watering hole at its center that looks highly reminiscent of a location in Alex Garland’s “Annihilation.” After both dogs take a drink of the mysterious water, the man brings them back home, disturbed as to why they now seem to be intensely staring at each other. Soon enough, something happens to the dogs which recalls the initial moments of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” and it’s clear before any human characters start delivering exposition that something in that water can make two living things uncontrollably merge together physically.

We’re then introduced to our protagonist couple: a successful school teacher, Millie (Alison Brie) and her thirty-something man-child beau, Tim (Dave Franco). The two seem inseparable to their friends, but all is not well behind closed doors, as Tim is increasingly feeling trapped in their relationship while Millie is feeling way more like a substitute mother. The two haven’t made love in a long time, a problem only exacerbated by the still-recent death of Tim’s parents (flashes of which we see in a very “Midsommar” fashion, with those images the most nightmarish in the whole film). After an embarrassingly awkward marriage proposal, Tim and Millie move into a house in that upstate small town from the opening. Millie takes a new job at a local school, drawing the attention of a lonely older teacher and neighbor, Jamie (Damon Herriman), while Tim insists on trying to rekindle his flailing music career by traveling back and forth to New York City. One day, the couple try and rekindle their spark by going on a hike in the nearby woods, only to accidentally stumble into those ruins during a storm. As the two are forced to wait out the storm overnight, Tim runs out of water, causing him to utilize that nearby pool of liquid.

From there, we’re off to the races, and Shanks admirably doesn’t waste time in bringing on the ickiness. That said, the movie does spend some time with neither Tim nor Millie quite aware of what’s happening and why, which leaves us waiting for the protagonists to play catch up for a bit too long. Fortunately, the set-pieces Shanks and his crew have come up with are enough of a distraction from the plot mechanics, as each sequence cleverly builds to a fever pitch and delivers on the icky promise of the premise. To wit: if you question what might happen when a couple infected with something trying to merge their bodies together finally does the nasty, you’ll get your answers and then some.

Shanks can clearly blend horror and comedy, keeping things hilarious while never letting the tension diminish, and it’s a technique that allows him to play an audience like a fiddle. “Together” is one of those commercial horror films where you can literally watch an audience react in unison; the screams, laughs, and groans all come as if the audience had been rehearsed beforehand. As a craftsman filmmaker, Shanks undeniably excels, getting around issues of logic and rules by making each new problem Tim and Millie have to face feel as emotionally true as possible.

If there’s one major detriment to the film, it’s that the material never quite breaks through the surface, the movie being literally and figuratively skin deep. That’s not to say there’s no substance here — topics such as Tim’s parental issues making him childish, Millie’s needs manifesting as overbearing, and other such elements do crop up, and they’re quite welcome when they do. Sadly, once the body horror dilemma the couple face becomes a constant instead of intermittent problem, it feels like so much of their personal drama is waved away — a perfectly timed line of dialogue from Brie essentially closes off the emotional tension between the duo, and while it makes for a huge laugh line, it feels like too much of a missed opportunity dramatically.

With Shanks essentially dropping the ball on the war of the roses between the couple at that point, what substance “Together” is left with comes via the casting of real-life partners Brie and Franco. This is the second horror movie they’ve starred in together (following 2020’s Franco-directed “The Rental”), making them a sort of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands of indie horror. There is a special frisson that the film has knowing that we’re watching two people who indeed know each other intimately go through such craziness, and while it’s not the same tension on display as in, say, Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” it’s impressive how clearly game and committed Franco and Brie are, to the film and to each other.

How much “Together” gets under your skin likely greatly depends on your relationship status. For single folks, it’s a movie that’s slight but a hoot, featuring characters who are acting strange and irrationally long before anyone drinks the magic water. For those in a relationship, I’d venture to guess that it might disturb them a bit more, causing them to reexamine the status of their partnership and either cringe in recognition at the couple’s behavior or feel superior to them, depending on their circumstances.

In either case, both single folks and couples can enjoy “Together” the way it feels like it was designed to be enjoyed: as a raucous, fun, naughty date night horror film in a movie theater. While the film has its pleasures on its own, its effect is absolutely magnified by watching it with the right audience. In that way, I suppose the movie does have a sly, subversive subtext to it: after these several long years of relative isolation, where it feels like people have become increasingly used to individual experiences, here’s a film which both feeds our fear of other people as well as reinforces our need for sharing our lives with someone else. As much as you may never fully understand that person next to you, it turns out that “Together” is best experienced, well, together.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

“Together” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It will open in theaters on August 1, 2025.