In Michael Shanks’ debut feature "Together," love is neither a candlelit dinner nor a simple fight about dirty dishes. It’s a living, writhing organism that seeps into bone marrow, clings to flesh, and—when neglected—mutates into something ravenous and unspeakable. This is a horror film in the truest sense: not about monsters lurking outside the window, but the terror of sharing every breath, every mistake, every inch of your skin with someone you can no longer entirely recognize, yet still depend on.
Tim and Millie, a couple weathered by years of almosts and what-ifs, attempt a pastoral escape to salvage what’s left of their relationship. The countryside promises clean slates and open air, but a seemingly tranquil woodland walk meant to familiarise themselves with their new surroundings, curdles into a nightmare when they fall into a cave.
Trapped, thirsty, and forced to spend the night, the couple drink from a well that NOBODY in their right mind would EVER drink from. And when they finally return home, something is wrong... very wrong. The couples bodies begin to betray them. At first, it’s subtle—their lips sticking together after a kiss, struggling to seperate themselves after an intimate moment —but soon their physical connection mutates into something grotesque and inescapable. Tim and Millie’s bodies pull toward each other with a gluey, magnetic hunger. Their intimacy becoming almost monstrous in its desperation, binding them together the more they try to stay apart.
Shanks directs with unnerving precision, steering the film away from simple grotesquery into something far more unsettling. The horror here isn’t just the ruptured flesh or unnatural contortions—it’s the suffocating intimacy of a love that has nowhere left to go. The film lingers on that quiet terror of long-term devotion: knowing someone so completely that the boundaries blur, your identity softens, and suddenly you’re no longer certain where you end and they begin. It’s as much a portrait of emotional codependency as it is body horror, turning the promise of “together forever” into something physical, invasive, and inescapable.
Franco and Brie deliver harrowingly physical performances—tumbling, contorting, clutching at one another as if their survival depends on it. The practical effects are an achievement in tactile terror: sinew stretches like molten sugar, joints crack with wet snaps, and a climactic set piece in a bathroom stall will have audiences half-gagging, half-applauding its audacity. And yet, through every sticky, bone-crunching metamorphosis, Together remains blackly funny—a wicked smirk at the lengths we’ll go to prove love can survive anything.
By its end, you’ll realize the true horror isn’t the monstrous metamorphosis. It’s the mirror the film holds up to long-term commitment: the terrible beauty of wanting to become one with another human being, and the gut-turning realization that doing so might destroy you both.
In the end, Together is a haunting meditation on what it truly means to merge lives—how love can demand everything, reshaping identities until there’s no longer two, just one fragile, shared existence. It’s a terrifying, heartbreaking truth: to be together in the deepest sense, you must be willing to lose yourself entirely—and sometimes, that loss is the only way to survive.
"Together" is not just scary—it’s intimate, brilliant, and unforgettable. For those who dare to watch, bring a strong stomach and prepare to feel the squirming, symbiotic ache of love at its most corrosively eternal.
8/10
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