Being Film #14 for Hooptober 2025
Tone is such a fickle thing. So hard to maintain, and if you find it too late, it’s nearly impossible to get back and adjust the rest to match, either in reshoots or the edit. Together is a case in point: beautifully acted, some truly gnarly effects work, an overarching theme about co-dependency…and yet. All of those don’t matter if the tone is off, and my biggest issue with Together is that by the time it really finds its footing we’ve spent an awkward first half of the film that lingers a bit too long, marring an otherwise outrageous and fun second half.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Mille and Tim have been a loving, supporting couple for so long they really don’t know life without the other. That raises some issues as both try to figure out what they want, but too afraid to really sit down and confront their situation. So OF COURSE the best medicine is a move out to the country, where Millie takes on a new teaching job supporting Tim as he works through his personal demons including a tragic parental death and no longer being the indie music darling he apparently was before. If only they hadn’t moved next to the collapsed church in the middle of the forest, where mysterious bells signal the presence of something dark and sinister, something that just might solve their issues, albeit in the most graphic, body horror way possible…
Let’s put aside the legal woes around the lawsuit and copyright infringement that Together may or may not be guilty of, and just focus on the film. Writer/director Michael Shanks debut really made the most of the fact his stars are a real life couple. Dave Franco and Alison Brie are absolutely fantastic in the film, bringing a heat and chemistry to Millie and Tim that isn’t afraid to get uncomfortably intimate, especially during their early scenes of distress and fighting, establishing a couple whose complacency is beginning to show deep cracks.
Brie has long been a favorite since her days on Community, really expanding her range and abilities in a number of independent films, but it was Dave Franco who came away impressing me the most. He really leans into his trauma and dependency on Millie, coming off as an needy asshole and then over the course of Together’s batshit crazy through-line growing into the person they both need him to be.
So why the lukewarm review? Shanks takes a little too long to get to the weirdness of what’s happening, and though I appreciate that he makes it clear early on this is very much a supernatural thing happening (shocker: there is a cult involved), he can’t get away from distracting arial shots that don’t really serve the story other than “look we have a drone for these kind of shots” and he can’t get the vibe of humor and desperation that makes the second half such a hoot. It’s too raw, and their angst and unspoken problems jar against moments of pure movie cliche: the scene where they unpack and Franco “helps” by picking up Brie and carrying her into the house feels like such a trope it distracted me.
Works much better when Brie is figuring out how to use an electric saw with her left hand to cut their fused bodies apart.
And then there’s the final shot, which I completely get from a plot and a punchline perspective, except it’s handled in such a bumbling way (I think it’s the voice more than anything else) it leaves you laughing for the wrong reasons. It’s a sledgehammer where a simple knock would do. But I do think the pieces that work work really well, and Together ultimately comes out on the plus side of the equation.
Cinema Dual 
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