Studio:   Neon
Director: Michael Shanks
Writer:   Michael Shanks
Producer: Mike Cowap, Andrew Mittman, Eric Feig, Julia Hammer, Tim Headington, Max Silva, Alison Brie, Dave Franco
Stars:    Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman

Review Score:

Summary:

A troubled couple is forced to confront uncertainties in their relationship when their bodies begin fusing together after a bizarre woodland experience.

Synopsis:

As part of a search party combing remote woods for missing couple Keri and Simon, a man finds two stray dogs who drank from a water pool in a subterranean cavern marked by a peculiar bell. The dogs begin staring intently at each other. After bringing the dogs home as pets for his daughter Anna, the man is horrified to later discover them fused together into one disfigured creature.

Schoolteacher Millie Wilson and her longtime boyfriend Tim Brassington, a struggling musician concerned that their troubled relationship and uncertain future have compromised his personality, host a going away party for themselves before moving to an isolated home for Millie’s new teaching job. An awkward moment occurs when Millie surprises Tim by proposing marriage in front of their friends and Tim hesitates.

Millie and Tim move into their new house in the country where Tim discovers a nest of rotting rats in the ceiling above a light fixture. Later, this inspires Tim to recall a memory of discovering his dead father decaying in bed alongside his mother, whose mind snapped following her husband’s death, leaving her to remain in bed with his corpse.

While hiking together in the forest, Tim and Millie become lost before falling in the hole marked by the bell. Looking around, Tim notices church pews embedded in the cavern walls. Unable to climb out due to a pouring rainstorm overhead, the couple settles in for the evening. Millie drinks from a water bottle, but Tim drinks from the same pool in the ground as the dogs.

Tim and Millie wake the next morning to find their lower legs partially stuck together. After pulling themselves free and climbing out of the hole, the couple returns home where Tim becomes strangely entranced and begins gripping Millie’s flesh tightly while massaging her shoulders.

Millie drives into town. Millie’s increasing distance causes Tim’s inexplicably entranced body to be violently pulled toward her shifting directions until he snaps out of it.

Tim visits Doctor Mendoza to find out what’s wrong with him. The doctor doesn’t discover anything physically or mentally abnormal, but he does mention the missing couple and also prescribes Tim a muscle relaxer.

Jamie McCabe, a friendly teacher who works at Millie’s new school and was part of the committee that hired her, visits Millie and Tim’s home since he lives nearby. Over wine, Tim asks Jamie about the woodland cavern with distinct bells and old church pews. Jamie explains there used to be a New Age church in the forest, but it collapsed and fell underground.

After Jamie leaves, Tim is suddenly compelled to make out with Millie. Their kissing abruptly ends when Millie thinks Tim bit her lip, which he denies doing. That night, the couple is jolted awake when Tim chokes on Millie’s hair that he forcefully inhaled from her head while asleep.

Although she’s concerned he may be ill, Millie drives Tim to a train station so he can travel to a gig his band recently booked. Instead of going to his show, Tim wanders to Millie’s school in a fugue state and has spontaneous sex with Millie in a bathroom stall. Unable to separate their genitalia afterward, Millie’s forceful removal causes painful bleeding. Brought to the bathroom by a concerned student, Jamie passes off Millie’s presence in the boy’s bathroom as being due to unexpected menstruation even though he notices Tim’s shoes.

Back at home, Millie argues with Tim about their poor sex life as well as his sudden actions putting her job in jeopardy. Millie challenges Tim to leave her, but he says the conflict between his brain and his body won’t allow him to.

Millie visits Jamie, whose woodland home has a bell above its front door similar to the one in the forest. After she confides in him about her rocky relationship with Tim, Jamie tells Millie a myth about Zeus separating humans into two halves that search for each other to become whole again. He also tells a story about how he once separated from his romantic partner, whom Millie presumes died, yet they were drawn back together because they felt incomplete without each other.

Millie leaves abruptly when she sees Tim outside. Millie reluctantly holds Tim’s eager hand on their walk home.

From geotags in their social media photos, Tim discovers the missing couple disappeared in the same location as the cave. Tim’s online investigation is interrupted by a sleepwalking encounter in which he has to slap Millie to get her off him.

Tim tries explaining to Millie that something happened to him in the cave and it now appears to have infected her too. Tim adds that their inexplicable attraction gets worse when they’re tired as he points out that the missing couple disappeared in the same cave. Millie tries leaving the room in disbelief, but she is unable to move further from Tim. Despite Tim’s insistence that they are somehow imprinted within each other, Millie tells Tim she wants him out of their house before her parents visit.

That night, Millie and Tim’s contorted bodies are pulled toward one another again. The two of them try fighting the pull, but their hands and arms merge together. By working in tandem, Tim and Millie manage to open the bottle of muscle relaxers and overdose on them to stop their bodies from fusing.

When he recovers, Tim finds Millie restrained him to a chair in preparation for using an electric saw to separate the fused skin still linking their arms together. Tim resists until he sees his flesh pulsing, indicating their merger will only continue worsening. Millie goes through with the painful procedure.

Millie insists on going to a hospital for their wounds, but she discovers her keys are at Jamie’s house. While Millie goes to Jamie’s, Tim returns to the cave in search of more clues.

At Jamie’s, Millie learns from his wedding video that Jamie was a member of the woodland cult purposely fusing themselves with their partners according to an ancient ritual. Millie realizes Jamie is actually two people merged into one body when he confronts her by insisting she and Tim can also create the ultimate intimacy, and she wouldn’t like the alternative if she resists. Millie flees after she and Tim slash at each other, briefly disfiguring his face.

In the church ruins, Tim is attacked by the missing couple who mutated into a gruesome monster. Tim eventually escapes.

Tim and Millie return to their house and begin pulling toward each other again. Claiming he knows how to stop what’s happening, Tim mimics Millie’s previous marriage proposal by getting down on one knee. Finally admitting he resisted acknowledging how Millie improved his life rather than impeded his pursuit of immature fantasies, Tim prepares to slash his own throat so his death will save her by stopping their fusion. Before he can act though, Millie collapses from blood loss stemming from her altercation with Jamie.

Refusing to let her sacrifice herself for him, Tim grips Millie’s arm to stop her bleeding, which causes their bodies to begin merging in a process that gradually turns more painful. Mutually agreeing to become one entity, Tim and Millie profess their love as he puts on her favorite Spice Girls record to initiate a dance together. By the time Millie’s parents arrive for their visit, Tim and Millie have a bell above their door and have fully formed into one androgynous person.

Review:

Based on the personas they’ve projected over the course of their careers, Dave Franco and Alison Brie don’t pair well on paper for a couple in love. I can’t speak to their real-life marriage, but these vast gaps in their usual characterizations are actually what make Brie and Franco an ideal match for “Together,” even if the people they play seem like they’re not.

Although her roles cover a range of genres and personality types, Alison Brie often carries herself with well-manicured and well-mannered articulateness reminiscent of Shelly Long, making it easy to picture her as Diane Chambers in a “Cheers” reboot. With equal abilities to be studious, strong, or sultry, Brie is a casting director’s dream for a suburban housewife, a cunning businesswoman, or anyone in between who can convey wide-eyed optimism as effortlessly as guiltless vengeance. Dave Franco’s resume also contains a multi-genre mix, mostly horror and humor, though his presence in Seth Rogen projects like “Superbad” and “Neighbors” among other comedies gives him the guise of a loveable goofball or clumsy stoner, neither of whom are an obvious partner for the women Brie typically portrays.

Those impressions extend to the parts they play in “Together.” Alison Brie is Millie, an appropriately old-fashioned name for a demure schoolteacher whose favorite band is the Spice Girls and whose mom-ready wardrobe includes sweater vests and puffy-shouldered blouses. Millie’s longtime boyfriend is Dave Franco’s Tim. His wardrobe includes a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard t-shirt with a knit beanie, items befitting a struggling musician like him, except Tim is a thirtysomething who should have abandoned his unachievable rock star fantasy years ago.

Following a prologue that provides a precursor for the more tangible horror ahead, “Together” opens on a going away party for Millie and Tim prior to their move to the country for Millie’s new job. While Tim’s ongoing uncertainty over their future stirs up the nagging fear that he compromised his coolness to pursue someone else’s ambition, Millie prepares to surprise him by proposing marriage in front of their friends. Not everyone is shocked when Tim’s visible reticence makes the big moment awkward for everybody, especially Millie. Her gal pal later questions just how “good” Tim really is for her while pointing out he hasn’t done something sweet in almost a decade.

It's not that Tim and Millie are wrong for each other. It’s that they’ve reached a point in their relationship when grand romantic gestures must make room for the realities of everyday living. Time has inevitably swerved them toward different directions, and Tim sees his individual identity being assimilated into a codependency his personal dreams never planned for. What makes Millie and Tim such a creative coupling is that this is precisely the conflicting dynamic required to make “Together’s” themes work in tandem with its terrors.

Millie wants Tim to be more involved with her while Tim no longer knows how Millie fits with him at all. Both of them get what they think want, but not at all in a manner they could imagine, when a chance drink of water in a weird forest cave initiates a startling transformation. Inexplicably, Tim finds himself increasingly attracted to Millie, but in a literally magnetic manner. He’s so unable to control these irresistible urges that he often becomes suddenly entranced, and each time they’re drawn together, Tim and Millie are finding it harder to physically tear themselves apart.

With Neon as its distributor and by nature of having a simple scope anchored on outstanding acting from two main performers, “Together” buzzes with arthouse vibes. However, it doesn’t play like a self-indulgent indie because its meaning isn’t hidden in a metaphor with over-stylized ambiguousness. “Together’s” crystal-clear commentary lies out in the open for everyone to plainly see in parallel with visceral action and suspense. It’s a fright film with something sincere to say about fear of intimacy and interpersonal connections, but it’s also straightforward, sickly body horror on par with any peer capable of making knuckles tighten and eyes turn away.

“Together’s” faults are few. Several beats test the bounds of plausibility with how they’re serendipitously structured, either in where they’re conveniently placed or in the questionably motivated actions taken to trigger them. There are also one too many nightmare sequences and freaky flashbacks whose primary purpose is shock value, almost as though a producer pushed for their inclusions so they could be cut into a traditional trailer for mainstream marketing. On the other hand, if a horror film’s chief criticisms are that it contains too many imaginary scares or quizzical behaviors, then it’s in good company considering the same can be said of other high-quality movies in the genre.

Director Michael Shanks’s multilayered script carefully balances the peaks and the valleys of Dave Franco and Alison Brie’s chemistry to sell a fantastical story with a bite of believability owed to how relatable the underlying idea is. In addition to Franco and Brie, Damon Herriman is not to be overlooked as Millie’s fellow schoolteacher Jamie, as his own balance between outwardly inviting and quietly creepy casually erases all images of Dewey Crowe that “Justified” fans might think they can’t shake.

“Together” drops so many details into its taut 95 minutes, a second viewing would undoubtedly be equally rewarding, yet in an entirely different way that reshapes the movie. I’m not talking about obvious clues like the bell, but subtler ones like Jamie mentioning he was on the committee that hired Millie, which is something whose inclusion alters the backstory with an unsettling insinuation viewers might not factor the first time. Watching repeatedly or only once, the result is still the same. Engaging as allegory, and entertaining as a carnival-like freak show, “Together” is a full-bodied horror experience no matter what a viewer wants or expects from it, not unlike an unappreciated relationship that’s entirely satisfying whether one consciously realizes it or not.

Review Score: 85