Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Shanks
Starring: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman
Alison Brie and Dave Franco are stuck on one another in writer/director Michael Shanks' feature debut Together. Quite literally stuck. Shanks deploys the increasingly popular body-horror sub-genre to depict the push and pull of romantic relationships in gruesomely icky detail as two people who don't seem to belong together find they can't live without one another.
The real life couple play lovers Millie and Tim. After a prologue that nods explicitly to John Carpenter's The Thing, we meet Millie and Tim as they throw a party to say goodbye to their friends in the city before they relocate to the countryside where Millie has landed a job as a school teacher. It's clear from the way their friends speak about their other halves (Tim is slammed as a loser for not holding a steady job while Millie is mocked for stifling Tim's musical ambitions) that Millie and Tim are one of those couples whose relationship doesn't make sense to anyone except themselves. When a tipsy Millie awkwardly proposes to Tim in the middle of the party he freezes in shock before feeling obligated to say "Yes."
Despite their clear issues, Millie and Tim press ahead and make the move to the country. In a conceit borrowed from a hundred TV shows, the couple have a bonding moment when they find themselves trapped underground while hiking in the woods near their new home. After falling asleep they wake to find their legs stuck together by a weird substance that a clueless Tim believes is simply mildew. Freeing themselves and leaving their subterranean trap, the two return home. But something has changed in Tim and Millie. Having previously sought space and time away from his partner, Tim now finds himself feeling physically sick in Millie's absence, and for the first time in months, he becomes aroused by her presence. Yeah, it wasn't mildew.
What ensues is the sort of plot that might have formed the basis of a '90s Jim Carrey comedy as Tim and Millie are physically drawn to one another in the most painful way imaginable. But Shanks skilfully mines laughs from his scenario while ensuring Together stays on just the right side of camp. A scene that wouldn't be out of place in a Porky's sequel, in which Tim and Millie's genitals become fused during an impromptu hook-up at the latter's workplace, initially generates laughs before the audience is forced to reckon with the true horror of such a scenario, and a quick close-up insert will have every male viewer wincing. The rubbery effects recall the '80s films of Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna, and Together's fusion of bodies allegorises codependency in the way the "shunting" sequences of Yuzna's Society referenced the class war.
Married couple Brie and Franco were partly hired because the nature of the prosthetic make-up meant that the actors playing Tim and Millie would have to use the bathroom together, but they're both ideally placed in their roles. Casting real life partners adds an extra level of discomfort to the movie's most disturbing scenes, which aren't those involving gory decoupling and slicing with carving knives but rather the earlier depictions of two miserable people being passively aggressive to each other. Brie convinces as a woman who simply doesn't want to admit she's made a mistake and is determined to see her relationship through, while Franco cleverly uses his slack posture to paint a picture of a man going through the motions of being a boyfriend, often resembling a string puppet discarded in some dusty attic.
Together doesn't take a side when it comes to its central couple - Tim and Millie are both awful partners in their ways. They each complain that their other half isn't "there" and yet they're both guilty of being emotionally absent and insensitive to the other's needs. But they're dependent on each other for their own misguided reasons: Tim needs Millie's financial support while Millie seems scared of being seen as a spinster. And yet there's an undeniably romantic element to Shanks' film. By the climax, the sort of body-horror that had previously made us flinch becomes something almost transcendent and spiritual. Together occasionally relies on old tropes and visceral body trauma, but (unless you believe the accusations of plagiarism that have been levelled against the production) Shanks has created a unique piece of horror storytelling that gets its point across through the use of striking images rather than half-formed lectures. See it with your other half.
Together is in UK/ROI cinemas from August 15th.
