Together Review: Body Horror You Can Bring A Date To

Has body horror gone mainstream in the 2020s? It's one thing for a faint-inducing body horror movie like "Titane" to overcome both squeamishness and genre bias to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It's another for Demi Moore's insanely gory monster transformation in "The Substance" to become a major awards juggernaut, with five Oscar nominations including best picture. "Together," opening soon in wide release after Neon paid top dollar for the rights at Sundance, might represent the next step in the genre's shifting reputation: what was once the provenance of sickos — the type of horror even other horror fans often found too much to stomach — is now safe for date nights.

Writer-director Michael Shanks' first feature stars real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Millie and Tim, a couple who has been dating for 10 years but have yet to get married and haven't had sex in months. The two partners — they think "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" sounds too immature at this point in their relationship — are moving to a house in the countryside for the sake of Millie's new teaching job (Tim's aspirations of a career in music have not been finding success). Millie wonders if she should split from Tim to avoid heartbreak later, but instead ends up proposing to him anyway — a proposal he rejects due to some heavy family trauma around commitment.

Tim and Millie's issues with commitment and codependency take a turn for the strange when they fall down a sinkhole into a cave filled with the ruins of an abandoned church. After Tim drinks the water in the cave — the requisite terrible decision every horror movie protagonist must make at least once — something changes in him that turns his relationship issues into physical sickness. Being alone now causes panic attacks, and when the couples' bodies touch, it becomes increasingly difficult to pull them apart. And the problems only escalate from there.

Doing double duty as both a romcom and a twisted body horror movie is a tonal challenge that "Together" pulls off successfully, in large part thanks to how fun it is. Its biggest set-pieces can be funny while also frightening, sickening and sweet simultaneously. Michael Shanks is able to create the feeling of extremity while still keeping the horror more approachable than, say, the Philippou brothers' "Bring Her Back" — the most heavily foreshadowed moment of gore is barely shown, elided with a cut that releases the tension and lets the audience laugh.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie's individual talents as actors and natural chemistry with one another make Tim and Millie compelling to watch as they try to fight being fused into one being. In some respects, actual lovers might have an easier time playing fictional lovers, but such casting also creates an extra challenge when it comes to a movie that gets into so many of the ugly and uncomfortable aspects of long-term relationships. Both Franco and Brie acquit themselves of that challenge well, finding the horror in the romcom and the romcom in the horror.

The effects work on the body horror elements isn't as astonishing as those in "The Substance" or John Carpenter's "The Thing," but considering this is a smaller budget indie, the mix of CGI and practical effects works well in creating some memorably unnerving imagery. Backstory is doled out with the right mix of detail and mystery through the character of Jamie (Damon Herriman), a fellow teacher who discusses his husband in the past tense and encourages Millie to stick with her other half as best she can. Jamie's talk about Plato's "Symposium" got me thinking of other queer resonances to this material: there's "The Origin of Love" song from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," and there's also a way in which "Together" plays like an evil twist on parts of "Steven Universe." Body horror is a genre that lends itself to queer readings, and while "Together" might be about a heterosexual couple, I'm curious to read queer analysis of it.

There is one big controversial elephant in the room when discussing "Together," and that is the plagiarism lawsuit. Patrick Henry Phelan has alleged that significant portions of "Together" were stolen from the script for his 2023 film "Better Half." Since "Better Half" has not found distribution outside of film festival screenings, I can't compare the two films directly, but from the evidence I've seen, I'm leaning toward suspecting the allegations will be dismissed. For one thing, the thematic thrusts of the two movies seem very different: "Better Half" has been described as a comedy about a one-night stand gone wrong, whereas "Together" is horror about a long-term relationship. For another, the details that Phelan's lawsuit says are identical between the two films are mostly natural reference points anyone who thought up the merged bodies concept independently would come up with, such as Plato's "Symposium" and the Spice Girls song "2 Become 1."

Even if the plagiarism accusations are bunk, that still gets at what the actual greatest flaw of "Together" is: it's all a bit too obvious to become something truly special. The big metaphor for toxic relationships is extremely on the nose right from the beginning, and it only starts to open itself up to more ambiguity toward the film's end, which begins to raise more questions about what (if anything) is the right way for the characters to deal with their fate. I'm not looking for subtlety in my body horror, but at the same time, the relative predictability of "Together" gives it a mild air of disposability. Definitely go see it if you can stomach it (the trailers and posters do a perfect job indicating the level of horror — if you can handle the marketing, you can definitely handle the film), and you'll have a very good time. I'm just not sure how much it will stick with you.

"Together" opens in theaters on July 30.