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.
