Always Good Movies

Direction: Michael Shanks
Country: Australia / USA

Together, a fairly entertaining supernatural body-horror film, marks the feature debut of Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks, who also designed the visual effects while drawing on his own relationships and fears.

Elementary school teacher Millie Wilson (Alison Brie) and aspiring musician Tim Brassington (Dave Franco) are a young couple whose once-solid bond has grown wobbly and cold. Hoping to repair it, they move into a creaky old countryside house. But after a bizarre hike in the woods, their lives take a terrifying turn, haunted by supernatural forces that relentlessly test their physical and psychological limits.

Together plays like a cross between Alien and Cronenberg’s dark films, yet it punctuates the dread with funny, ironic, and even embarrassing moments—keeping the entertainment value high. With flashes of originality and visual flair, it manages to stand out in the crowded horror-romance field by offering something unusually gripping and radical.

Brie and Franco, married in real life, convey both intimacy and discomfort effectively, navigating between marital tension and carnal nightmare with ease. The couple had previously shared the screen in Franco’s The Rental (2020), and here their chemistry grounds the film even when the story spins into excess. Together is one of those immediate audience-grabbers that, even when veering into absurdity, remains undeniably fun.

Direction: Adrien Beau
Country: France

With The Vourdalak, newcomer filmmaker Adrien Beau draws inspiration from Alexei Tolstoy’s short story, creating an exhilarating celebration of the gothic style. Despite the low budget, the director lets his imagination soar, crafting a human-seized puppet to represent the vourdalak, a sort of proto-vampire that spares not even his own family. He also gives voice to it.

The story follows the inquisitive Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé (Kacey Mottet Klein), a noble emissary of the King of France, who loses his way in the woods after being attacked and robbed by bandits. He finds refuge with a strange, cursed family.

The director and cast waltz through this sinister tale with bizarre, ritualistic steps. The minimalist decor, complemented by effective cinematography, creates an atmosphere reminiscent of another time, moving between eerie medieval mysticism, patriarchal dominance, and ridicule. However, the film's theatrical staging leaves uncertain whether it aims to be a campy homage to cult vampire black comedies or a nightmarish horror odyssey.

Retractable fangs fail to deliver a significant bite, resulting in an outrageously fascinating failure that could have been a laugh riot. Enthusiasts of mysterious old tales and legends can go for it, but they’ll have to adapt to and accept this peculiar aesthetic, which can sometimes be coarser than expected.