If you’ve ever found yourself saying (or contemplating saying) that very statement, years into a steady, but non-matrimonial relationship, Michael Shanks’ Neon release Together will be the most confronting, millennials-with-no-kids relationship horror movie you and your beloved have watched since Midsommar.
Actually-married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco are Millie and Tim: Millie’s new teaching gig has found them moving to the countryside from the Big City, while Tim is a directionless musician, complete with ironic, hipster mullet. During the couple’s farewell party with dozens of friends in attendance, Millie gets on one knee and proposes to a blindsided and lukewarm-reacting Tim, after a decade spent together with no wedding rings in sight. Millie loves her man to pieces, to the point of almost reaching complacency. Tim has lost himself in their new surroundings and is at a crossroads with how he feels about his relationship to Millie, and his aloofness is directly responsible for her growing resentments. But, as the movie explains, complacency can be harmony, and perhaps the notion that you’re never really complete until you find your other half is not as archaic of a concept as we believed.
Together is exactly what I thought it would be, while also vastly different from personal expectations. Unsurprisingly, Brie and Franco understand each other so deeply that every moment shared together on screen (which is most of them) feels rich in personal lore. Both sprawl out their entire physical and emotional beings on silver platters for the audience, and the ever-animated Franco’s ability to loudly over-perform feels appropriate for this specific material. The Neon joint is impeccably shot and contains sound design and lighting choices that sent the occasional shiver down my spine. The bone-cracking, joint-pushing, bloody gushiness of its body horror and creature design work will rival some of last year’s conversations regarding The Substance. (In fact, Together is essentially a straight couple’s version of The Substance— take that as you will.)
However, as weird as Together may get, it doesn’t quite get weird enough, with a cultish subplot and mustache-twirling villain, varying degrees of effective jump scares, and a few, semi-tired horror movie tropes that feel as if Shanks wasn’t confident enough in his intimate story about his fictional couple’s unraveling on its own merits. Tonally, its frequent humor is necessary, as a self-serious movie with no awareness of its own ridiculousness would be depleting. A brilliantly used Spice Girls needle drop is subtly laced throughout the film before its climax, and is one of the best vinyl rips of the contemporary, movies-need-viral-TikTok-marketing-moments era of recent memory. All 102 minutes briskly move through the viewer like a cool breeze, even in the film’s most intentionally uncomfortable moments.
Ultimately, the audience may never reach the levels of terrified for Tim and Millie’s physical fusions as Together may hope for us to reach. With that said, like the best of the genre, it serves as a thoroughly entertaining mirror. It’s scary to unlock introspection within our own fraught relationships to our long-term romantic partners and beg us to internally ask: Do I really love my partner, or am I afraid to be alone? Has our codependency replaced our love? What is he/she/they going to write as my last Facebook post when I die?
BRB…dying.
Julieann is a genre critic and writer whose work has been featured in Bloody Disgusting, FANGORIA, Second Sight Film, Rue Morgue, and more. She also spends her time creating exquisite horrific wreaths to make your home a little bit spookier, which you can buy here!