We all know couples like Tim and Millie. Never an I, always a we. Never an immediate answer, always an “I should probably check with him/her first.” Never alone, always together.
Your initial view, or more likely judgment, of their relationship is probably going to depend on your own, and in the under-the-radar Sundance horror Together, the first-time writer-director Michael Shanks invites us into their stifling two-person world to make up our own mind. They’re played by the real-life husband and wife Alison Brie and Dave Franco, who also starred together in the far less enjoyable thriller The Rental, a film full of empty recycling with the pretence of something new. There’s far less pretentiousness and far more originality here, despite the plot kicking off with the old “going from the city to the country to start a new life” trope. For Tim and Millie, it’s adding further distance from them and those around and at a going away party, there are already cracks underneath the smugness, tensions that are only slightly masked by the unintentionally cute matching outfits.
They’re moving for Millie’s job because she does after all have a job, unlike Tim whose dreams of being a working musician are becoming more embarrassing with age and while it’s not too far from the city for him to still gig, it’s far enough (Tim can’t even drive, but Millie can). It’s clear that Tim is losing control of who he is and losing sight of who he could become, one of his friends cruelly quipping: “When I die, I don’t want to see someone else’s life flash before my eyes”.
But while the film might seem to be going down a familiar, arguably sexist path (nagging, clingy woman who has it together v cucked slacker man-child who just can’t keep it together), Shanks soon switches the dynamic. While taking a hike near their idyllic, credulity-stretching new house (on a teacher’s salary!), the pair stumble upon a hidden structure. To the film’s credit, their decision-making is then unusually rooted in reality, as an accident strands them underground for the night and thirst forces Tim to drink from a neatly located pool of water. It shifts something overnight, the pair waking up with their legs slightly stuck together (Tim suggests mildew) and after they unstick and make it back home, Tim’s behaviour turns strange. The space he had grown to want from Millie gets cast aside for an all-consuming need to be with her. Phrases like “it’s painful to be away from you” and “maybe splitting now would hurt less” suddenly take on a nasty new meaning.
There’s something refreshingly blunt about what Together is trying to say about the dangers of codependency, a film too busy having fun to waste time writing a self-satisfied dissertation. Shanks teases something more derivatively on trend with Tim experiencing flashes of grim Midsommar-like family trauma but he’s not interested in keeping us in the depressing murk like so many of his genre peers. It’s a film that’s taken just about the right level of seriously, setting clear emotional stakes and avoiding wink-wink jokes yet never forgetting its place (it rightfully premiered during the Midnight section at Sundance). Given its flesh-stretching, bone-crunching body horror, there will be inevitable comparisons to the awfully overrated Oscar darling The Substance (the press tour has already invited them), but I’d say there’s a clearer, smarter and far tighter movie here, Shanks more aware of how to set and maintain rules and structure.
He’s also highly aware of how to direct a commercial horror film, Together looking as crisp, sleek and well-lit as those that came from an earlier decade (the producer Erik Feig, whose credits include I Know What You Did Last Summer and Wrong Turn, may have helped there too). He knows how to play with darkness and sound design, relying only on a couple of jump shocks, choosing the heightened sounds of Tim and Millie’s changing bodies to put us on edge. Brie and Franco, making full use of the sweet and sour of their real lived-in chemistry, handle smugly in love as well as they do furiously on the edge and have fun with some wild, gasp-inducing moments, such as a nightmarishly uncomfortable sex scene.
A problem with a film with such a crafty premise is that there are so many more things that could have been done to extend the tension, especially psychologically, and the rush through the most interesting section, as tense couple arguments go from nasty to gnarly, means we’re missing more of the internal horror. There are also inevitable issues with a shaky last act, Shanks like so many others struggling to tie things up, stumbling with conveniently discovered clues and some hokey, question-demanding explanation, almost leaving a messy bow on a pristinely wrapped gift. But a silly, splashy final bid for viral attention mostly works and helps to confirm what Together ultimately works best as: a convincingly gory argument for being single.
Together is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
