Together is allegory as grotesque spectacle. There is not much to interpret about the enmeshed co-dependency shaped by its symbiotic body horror. Whereas a common refrain of therapy-coded horror is that trauma inextricably ruins us, is transferable, and that’s pretty bad, that’s not how Together sees it. Michael Shanks’ debut feature is, in fact, optimistic about the whole situation. If you’re stuck with anyone, ideally it’s the person you love the most.
Call it cottage-core body horror but Together is cute about love. It helps that Dave Franco and Alison Brie love each other the most. In real life and in the movie. They are sweet even when the situation is grisly. Franco and Brie’s characters have moved into the woods to start a new life and their anxious attachment style gets even more anxious and attached when they succumb to the curse of a local cult, and literally cannot pull themselves apart — not without a power-saw and some muscle relaxers.
Shanks’ film goes hard on imagery and blessedly, is the sharp visual result of practical effects, body suits, and some traditional digital touch up. A movie like this would be ruined by AI — that it all reads as human-created is a testament to the human story at its root. As in love, with filmmaking, it’s better not to take shortcuts. That Together expresses its horror through clearly identifiable visual devices, is why it’s so much fun to watch.
The outcome of the total movie is mixed because the script is not very interesting in the end. There is a lot of depth about the central relationship but, perhaps pointedly, not much depth relating to who these people are outside of each other. It becomes hard to care when they’re fused because all we really know about them is what we mean to each other. Good for them, we might think as the couple grotesquely form into a single entity. Happy it worked out for them.
It works out because love is enough. They overcome the absurdity of the plot through communication and clarification of emotional boundaries. As such, Together becomes the rarest of recent horror films, using therapy-speak to show something bad and then allowing its characters to grow and accept the gravity of their circumstances. It’s not that deep. What you see is what you get. You don’t really come away with any deep thoughts about what has happened. The reflection is more like: good for them or I’m sorry that happened to them.