Here's a challenge for long-term couples who appreciate the horror genre: Sit down with your significant other and view Together. This critically acclaimed 2025 movie just made its online premiere via Hulu. At first glance, it could look like standard biological terror, but inside Together exists a deep examination about the ways we decide to love one another.
A Debut Feature Delving into Partnership Complexities
Together represents the first full-length movie for director Michael Shanks. It features the real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple named Tim and Millie, an unmarried couple that have stayed together for a decade. Having wed in real life in 2017, the actors contribute a particular energy to their roles, expertly portraying both the joys and frustrations of a long-term relationship.
The story starts when the couple transition from the urban environment to the countryside for her career. A somewhat stereotypical plot device, admittedly, but that’s primarily where the conventions conclude. Together evolves into as much a deep dive into the psyche of the pair’s relationship as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
An Otherworldly Trigger
While trekking near their rural residence, a tempest descends, and the protagonists discover an subterranean cavern. After a night spent there and finally finding a way out, a strange force begins influencing the couple. This force compels a supernatural closeness between them that goes exceeding simple connection.
The whole movie is a methodically building horror experience, weaving in elements of hallucinatory nightmares, gross (but not excessively graphic) body horror, and authentically humorous dialogue (sometimes during something disturbing). Michael Shanks orchestrates these parts neatly and presents them in a consistently growing aura of dread.
Layered Performances
A significant portion of Together is only Brie and Franco, and they deftly portray manifold depths to the characters’ relationship. Millie’s confidence and emotional bond is waning due to a distance. Her subconscious resentment of Tim for his hesitance to focus on anything other than his floundering music career gradually emerges.
In contrast, Tim's character experiences isolation and cut off by Millie, who’s the reason they’ve relocated rural and removed from his network of friends. He is terrified of the idea of completely losing his personal autonomy in another person. This fear is further exacerbated by the circumstance he does not operate a vehicle and needs Millie for getting around.
The film's most intelligent aspect in this movie never makes one partner or the other the definite antagonist.
Both characters confront the type of challenges that are inherent in most partnerships a decade in. Deep down, they still love one another. They still laugh together, comfort one another, and share intimately at times. But below this facade, there’s an persistent feeling of questioning about their relationship.
Allegory and Meaning
While the paranormal elements in Together represent these concerns of codependency and totally devoting oneself to a partner, the metaphor does not come across as overly obvious or heavy-handed. Instead, these more disturbing, unsettling scenes provide a ideal counterpart to the interpersonal storytelling. Both the supernatural and the personal serve the other in a mutually beneficial way.
A Divisive Ending
Together’s final act, which remains unspoiled, has sparked debate on the movie's final takeaway about codependent relationships. Accounts suggest that single viewers have seen the movie as a compelling reason for avoiding commitment. On the other hand, certain partners having disagreements found that the film ended up guiding them to reconcile.
Whether you’re single or coupled up, your own response could act as a great barometer of how you view relationships. Will the ending plant feelings of uneasiness and dread, or a uplifting feeling of optimism? Will you recognize your own traits in either protagonist and yell at the screen, or simply turn to your partner and state, “I understand that choice”?
Regardless of the outcome, Together is an experiment you can embark on at this very moment.
Together is streaming on Hulu's platform now.
