Here’s a pro tip: you want to be really sure what your relationship status is before you take a special someone to see the new horror movie Together. While the fleshy nastiness of the film hits hard (and made me regret chugging a large cherry Icee before the opening credits had finished), the parts that had me really hiding my eyes from the screen were the awful, awkward relationship moments. On the surface, Together is about a couple that falls prey to some sort of strange force that compels them to be physically together, but underneath it’s about what being a couple means in every sense of the word. That’s maybe not something you want to work out on the Uber ride home with someone who you swiped right only a week ago.
Real-life couple Alison Brie and James Franco play Millie and Tim, who have relocated from the city to a house in an unspecified rural town, complete with mysterious woodlands. It’s a move instigated by Millie, with Tim carried along like some sort of depressed vestigial tail, and the tension of that decision is exacerbated by Tim’s lack of a driver’s license, stalled music career and a recent bereavement that he’s still processing. It’s one of those “are they together because they really want to be, or because it’s the easy option at that moment?” situations.
So far, so middle of the road romance novel. But Brie is not going to meet a widowed lumberjack who teaches her to enjoy life again. Instead we get some truly effed-up stuff happening with skin and bones and hair and blood. This goes for the gore-free scenes too, where bodies are doing things they absolutely shouldn’t in even the most advanced yoga classes. Your eyes will be so busy taking it all in you might not even notice the movie’s terrific use of sound, perfectly tuned to keep your nervous system rattling with anxiety for the full runtime. I love gore, the messier the better, but Together got me in the guts with a sparing use of the usual stuff and found whole new ways to make me squirm.
Here’s the crazy thing: that was easier to deal with than the mess that was Tim and Millie’s relationship, like a casual drink with a neighbor where insecurities flare and the couple starts sniping at each other across the dinner table, or a goodbye party that was harder to watch than a scene where sex turns into the sort of nightmare only brought on by a dinner of LSD-laced cheese plate. I can deal with amorphous flesh and goop and the sound of straining joints popping like Rice Krispies, but I would not want to be a new couple holding hands in the cinema for a conversation where someone’s mother is used in an insult so brutal I felt it like a power saw to the soul.
One of the reasons the movie works is the casting. Brie and Franco, who as noted are also a couple IRL, are skilled actors, and turn in career bests as Millie and Tim. But psychologically knowing they were a couple freed my brain from trying to judge how realistic they were together, if there was any chemistry, or how I would feel if I had to turn up to work and glue my nipples to Tim from sales. My senses could just focus on the terrifying, twisted situation they found themselves in, and not on how platonic actors would have to make small talk between takes. There are few other characters in the film and they’re used sparingly. The camera stays on Millie and Tim with a claustrophobic possessiveness that would highlight any inauthenticity delivered by lesser performers.
If you’re the sort of couple who finishes each other’s sentences and has stopped shutting the bathroom door, you’re all good, and might even come out feeling even more in love than when you went in. If you don’t know your significant other’s middle name, think they text you too much, are a few years in but wondering if you really want to set up a joint account, or hear them ask questions like “would you still love me if I was a worm?” then maybe just go and see Superman and save Together for a night with your friends.
Rachel Weber is the Senior Editorial Director of Games at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, and French Bulldogs. Those extra wrinkles on her face are thanks to going time blind and staying up too late finishing every sidequest in RPGs like Fallout and Witcher 3.