Here's a challenge for long-term couples who appreciate the horror genre: Sit down with your partner and view Together. This critically acclaimed 2025 movie just made its streaming debut on the Hulu service. At first glance, it could look like conventional physical horror, but within Together lies a deep contemplation about our choices in loving our partners.
A Debut Feature Exploring The Nuances of Love
Together marks the first full-length movie for filmmaker Michael Shanks. It features the real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple named Tim and Millie, an unmarried couple that have remained a couple for ten years. Having wed in real life in 2017, the actors bring a particular energy to their roles, skillfully embodying both the strengths and weaknesses of a committed partnership.
The narrative starts when the couple transition from the metropolis to the country for her career. A familiar plot device, sure, but that’s mostly where the tropes end. Together becomes as much a deep dive into the psyche of the couple's dynamic as it is a body horror flick.
A Paranormal Spark
While walking near their new home, a storm hits, and Millie and Tim tumble into an hole in the earth. After being trapped overnight there and managing to escape, a supernatural entity takes hold of the pair. This force compels a paranormal intimacy between them that goes exceeding emotional intimacy.
The complete narrative is a gradually intensifying fright fest, interspersing elements of dreamlike terrors, disturbing (but not excessively graphic) body horror, and authentically humorous exchanges (sometimes amidst something disturbing). Michael Shanks weaves these elements together expertly and wraps them up in a slowly mounting atmosphere of fear.
Nuanced Portrayals
A great deal of Together is exclusively Brie and Franco, and they masterfully render countless layers to the partnership at the film's core. Her self-assurance and feeling of intimacy is suffering due to a emotional and physical gap. Her underlying frustration of Tim for his unwillingness to focus on anything other than his struggling artistic pursuits gradually emerges.
Conversely, Tim feels trapped and cut off by Millie, who’s the impetus they’ve left the city and removed from his social circle. He fears the concept of completely losing his individual identity in another person. This fear is further exacerbated by the circumstance he does not operate a vehicle and is dependent on Millie for mobility.
The film's most intelligent aspect in Together refrains from painting Tim or Millie the obvious villain.
Tim and Millie confront the sort of issues that come with most partnerships a decade in. Deep down, they still love each other. They still laugh together, comfort one another, and are vulnerable at times. But beneath it all, there’s an inescapable current of uncertainty about their bond.
Thematic Depth
While the supernatural forces in Together represent these concerns of excessive reliance and giving oneself over to a partner, the allegory does not come across as hamfisted or pretentious. Instead, these ickier, creepier moments present a brilliant analogue to the interpersonal storytelling. Both the frights and the fights serve the other in harmony.
A Debated Finale
Together’s conclusion, which won’t be spoiled here, has left audiences divided on the movie's final takeaway about unhealthy partnerships. It has been said that unattached audience members have understood the narrative as a powerful case for staying single. On the other hand, some couples who were in conflict found that the film ended up guiding them to reconcile.
Whether you’re single or coupled up, your own interpretation could potentially serve as a great barometer of how you perceive partnership. Will the conclusion plant anxiety and horror, or a heartwarming sense of hope? Will you identify in one of the characters and feel frustration, or simply look at your other half and say, “We could get through that together”?
No matter your reaction, Together is an experiment you can experience at this very moment.
Together is currently playing on the streaming service Hulu at present.
