Together (Photo – Neon)
Don’t drink the water.
Together
Directed by Michael Shanks – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
That warning to tourists should have been applied to Millie and Tim, the troubled couple in the new horror film Together.
Partly in an effort to mend their shaky relationship, depicted in the film’s opening scenes, they leave New York for the sylvan comforts of an unspecified rural community. The couple, played by Alison Brie (a far cry from her Mad Men days as Trudy) and Dave Franco (excellent as a struggling musician facing a midlife crisis at 35), quickly find that the slower pace isn’t fixing anything.
While exploring their new wooded surroundings, they get lost—and one by one, fall into a hole in the ground. Thirsty, they drink the water at its center.
Bad idea.
Gradually, they experience a new kind of togetherness, one that involves not the joining of their souls but of their bodies.
I found Together so watchable because it turns our deepest longings, to find someone, to not be alone, on their literal head. As Millie and Tim explore their imperfect union in ways both grotesque and, at times, bizarrely amusing (I wasn’t the only one chortling in the audience), echoes of Midsommar, a film whose influence on horror still lingers, and The Blair Witch Project came to mind.
I won’t spoil the specifics of the body horror (or is it bodies horror?) the film explores, but after its ambiguous ending, I noticed that the final credits list a contortionist body double for Ms. Brie. That felt appropriate, since the movie is a bit of a mind-bender anyway.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Santa Anita 16, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, Regal UA La Canada and Laemmle Royal.
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