Watching Together feels like being trapped inside your own relationship anxieties, then having them literally crawl under your skin. Directed by Michael Shanks and starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, the film follows Millie and Tim, a couple who retreat to the countryside hoping to rekindle something that’s quietly dying between them. What begins as a rustic reset turns into something far stranger when they stumble into a cave and an accident leaves their bodies beginning to fuse.
When closeness becomes terrifying
The premise sounds absurd on paper, but Together plays it almost straight, which makes it creepier. The early scenes are all about small fractures. Millie takes a teaching job while Tim, ever the dreamer, still insists his music career is one song away from success. Their banter is tense in that too-familiar way couples have when every conversation hides a dozen unspoken resentments. Then things get weird. The cave, the strange water, the shared sickness. Suddenly, their yearning to feel close becomes something literal and grotesque.
Brie and Franco are genuinely compelling together. Their chemistry feels lived-in, maybe because it is, and that adds authenticity to the film’s emotional chaos. You believe their affection, their frustration, and eventually their horror as they realize their bodies are no longer entirely separate. The more they fuse, the more the film digs into that awful truth that sometimes love means giving up too much of yourself.
The gore-soaked trenches of love
The practical effects in Together deserve serious applause. Skin merges, limbs contort, and the slow transformation of the couple is disturbing in a way that feels tactile and sad. There’s something darkly poetic about the film’s central metaphor. When they say “we’re in this together,” it’s not romantic anymore, it’s a warning.
Where the movie stumbles is pacing. The first act lingers too long on domestic bickering before the horror seeps in, and when it does, it arrives so abruptly that you can feel the gears grinding. The final stretch leans a bit too far into spectacle, introducing elements that muddy the intimacy the story had built. There’s a brief flirtation with something supernatural or conspiratorial that doesn’t fully land, and the emotional payoff gets buried under the weight of its own weirdness.
Love and identity don’t always fit together
The film’s heart is in its metaphor. It’s about losing yourself in a relationship until there’s nothing left that’s distinctly you. That message hits hard in the quieter moments, when Millie and Tim realize that their merged bodies mean shared pain, shared thoughts, and shared blame. It’s horrifying but also strangely tender. Still, the movie sometimes forgets to let us breathe with the characters. For all its originality, it occasionally mistakes shock for depth, showing us more gore than emotion when we want both.
What keeps it engaging is its commitment to emotional honesty. Beneath the flesh and fear, this is a story about codependence, guilt, and the messy process of letting go. Brie sells the despair and confusion of someone trapped in love’s most suffocating version. Franco, to his credit, plays Tim with a mix of charm and cowardice that makes their dynamic tragically believable.
A strange, sticky sort of beauty
By the end, Together doesn’t quite stick every landing, but it leaves a mark. It’s ambitious, heartfelt, and unapologetically weird. The horror isn’t just about bodies—it’s about the things we surrender for comfort, the parts of ourselves that dissolve when love becomes obligation.
I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5. It’s good, sometimes even brilliant, though it struggles to balance its metaphor and its madness. Still, for anyone who likes their horror intimate, emotional, and a little bit gross, Together is worth the discomfort. It lingers like a bruise, tender and unforgettable in all the right ways.