Stream It Or Skip It?

You’ve seen Chekov’s gun many times before, but Together (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) offers us the highly tantalizing Chekov’s Sawzall. Yikes? Yep – and you don’t know the half of it, my friend. Real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco topline this psycho-body-horror outing that literalizes codependency in highly traumatic ways. And remember, if you think this horrifying stuff is hilarious, you won’t be nearly as icked out or bothered-in-the-brain about it. You should try it some time. It works for me. Mostly.

TOGETHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The scene is a going-away party for Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie). All their friends are seeing them off, from the cramped, expensive city to the quieter, more spacious country. They’ve been a couple for an unspecified amount of time that’s long enough to make onlookers wonder if they dressed alike on purpose or not – and “not” is potentially scarier, since it’s all, y’know, subconscious. They say a few words for a toast and then Tim turns to find Millie on one knee. He freezes up. No answer emerges from his mouth, and there’s a reason for this, which we’ll get into here in a minute. It’s awkward in front of all these people. He loves her and she loves him but the “but” in this sentence implies all manner of unexamined feelings. They aren’t kaput over this, not at all. They soldier ahead and that night after they’ve climbed into bed, Tim says yes, of course they can get married. And this is therefore never going to be a rom-com. You may breathe a sigh of relief if you wish.

The dynamic between them is worth some scrutiny. Millie is an elementary school teacher with a fresh new job. Tim is a struggling musician who’s looking to “self-release” his new stuff. Do we even need to read into this? Nope. He does not bring home much bacon, and they later have a conversation about how he eats up all the risk for both of them while she keeps the steady job. On top of this, Tim bears the burden of some childhood trauma that manifests in good-golly-jesus-f— miserable scary nightmares, so the dude’s got some issues. And on top of that, Tim and Millie have been together long enough that their sex life has gone stagnant. She wants it. He doesn’t. She’s patient. He’s confused. She fits right in at the new job, eased along by super-sweet nice guy teacher Jamie (Damon Herriman), who’s also their neighbor just up the gravel road. He gets his gear together for a gig in the city, and she has to drive him to the local train station because he doesn’t have his license. Does Tim have beta issues? Maybe, but it might go deeper than that.

Now, some context: A couple recently went missing in the wooded area near their new home, and hasn’t been found. It’s a lovely area for hiking so Tim and Millie explore a bit and, as people in relationships tend to do, they get lost during a downpour and fall in a hole. Most of the time it’s figurative, but here it’s literal. And of course, it’s not just any hole but a seemingly haunted hole, and they hole up in the hole – OK, it’s more of a cavern once you get past the surface hole – for the night. Thirsty, Dave takes a drink of water from a nearby well before going to sleep and having miserable dreams and waking up gently stuck to Millie, calf to calf. Curious. “Mildew” he theorizes as they painfully pull themselves apart. Nothing is the same after that, and if you’re thinking that’s a good thing because their relationship is so dysfunctional, well, it might not be since Dave seems to be losing his mind whenever Millie isn’t nearby. He gets this strange possessed look on his face and he feels “thirsty all over” and an unseen force seems to be dragging him in her direction and he’s just… sticky. Good news is, their sex life resumes. Bad news is, nobody wants to have sex like that.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Sure looks like The Substance is going to be a reference point moving forward, inspired as it was (and Together is) by Cronenberg and Carpenter.

Performance Worth Watching: Brie is a terrifically subtle, terribly underrated comic actor – see also Horse Girl and Somebody I Used to Know – who gives a performance loaded with subtext, in her tone, line readings and physical mannerisms. 

Memorable Dialogue: Two mantras are repeated here: “If we don’t split now it’ll be much harder later” and “It’s called Diazepam now.”

Sex and Skin: Oh. MY god.

Our Take: Director/writer Michael Shanks establishes a perfect tone with Together. Perfect. From the cold open with the dogs (don’t ask) to the exquisite Spice Girls needle drop deep in the third act. And that scary/funny/loaded-like-a-double-barreled-12-gauge tone is the broth in which the mangled bodies and thorny ideas about coupledom marinate. It gives new shade and meaning to phrases like “I need some space” and “separation anxiety.” It may prompt reflection on the joys and perils of lengthy coupledom, and it may make you roar with laughter in the face of some visual effects that are as gruesomely realistic as they are original.

The film takes its ideas seriously enough to make them manifest physically, but not so seriously that it shouldn’t be taken as anything more than hyperbole, an excuse to entertain us by squicking us out to ragged extremes. Honestly, I was less disturbed by the visual presentation of, let’s just call it intense commingling, more troubled by the dream sequences, where Shanks skillfully exploits middle-of-the-night unease, when tiny little noises and nagging anxieties are like hungry kodiak bears in your bedroom. 

The actual stuff of the plot is meh – a mystery in a hole in the woods, a few key hints at it, some supernatural whatnot – and the screenplay is a little sloshy around the edges, in the way it addresses characters’ backgrounds and the how and why of the Cursed Well In A Hole In The Woods. Vagueness works for Together though, built as it is primarily to tantalize, entertain and gross out, and secondarily prompt ruminations on the nigh-impossibility of achieving a balanced relationship with a significant other.

The material is sold to us through Franco’s growing desperation, Brie’s assuredness and on-point comic timing — their real-life coupledom surely informs their performances, although I refuse to read into this too much — and a terrific supporting turn by Herriman, playing a sweetheart of a man who’s so earnest, he sure as hell seems too good to be true. Together tends to fiddle with familiar tropes, and can be predictable in its broader strokes. But just because you know The Scene is coming doesn’t mean you’ll get over it anytime soon.

Our Call: Horror-comedies as potent as Together come around a couple times a year, if we’re lucky. So STREAM IT, but be warned that it may challenge your more delicate sensibilities.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.