Here's a challenge for partners in committed relationships who appreciate the horror genre: Settle in with your partner and stream Together. This critically acclaimed 2025 movie just made its online premiere on the Hulu service. At first glance, it might appear like standard body horror, but beneath Together exists a intense contemplation about how we choose to love our partners.
A Debut Feature Delving into Relationship Dynamics
Together marks the first full-length movie for director Michael Shanks. It showcases the real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple named Tim and Millie, partners that have remained a couple for ten years. Having wed in reality in 2017, the actors contribute a particular energy to their roles, masterfully depicting both the good and bad of a committed partnership.
The plot starts when Millie and Tim relocate from the metropolis to the countryside for professional reasons. A somewhat stereotypical plot device, of course, but that’s mostly where the cliches cease. Together evolves into as much a psychological exploration of the couple's dynamic as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
A Paranormal Spark
While walking near their new home, a violent storm occurs, and the protagonists tumble into an subterranean cavern. After being trapped overnight there and eventually escaping, a supernatural entity starts to affect the pair. This force compels a paranormal intimacy between them that goes exceeding typical partnership.
The entire film is a gradually intensifying fright fest, interspersing bits of fever-dream horrors, disturbing (but tastefully done) body horror, and genuinely funny interactions (sometimes amidst something grotesque). The director orchestrates these parts seamlessly and presents them in a slowly mounting aura of dread.
Nuanced Portrayals
A large part of Together is only the two lead actors, and they deftly portray numerous complexities to the dynamic between Tim and Millie. Millie's sense of self and feeling of intimacy is deteriorating due to a lack of intimacy. Her unspoken irritation of Tim for his unwillingness to focus on anything other than his struggling artistic pursuits inexorably rises.
In contrast, Tim's character senses confinement and separated by Millie, who’s the cause they’ve relocated rural and far away from his network of friends. He fears 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 is dependent on Millie for getting around.
Shanks’ smartest move is that he never makes either of his characters the obvious villain.
Tim and Millie face the type of challenges that arise in any relationship over a long period. Deep down, they have affection for each other. They still laugh together, comfort one another, and are vulnerable at times. But beneath it all, there’s an unavoidable undercurrent of doubt about their relationship.
Allegory and Meaning
While the otherworldly presence in Together act as a metaphor for these anxieties of excessive reliance and fully committing to a partner, the metaphor does not come across as hamfisted or pretentious. Instead, these ickier, creepier moments provide a ideal counterpart to the relationship narrative. Both the supernatural and the personal enhance each other symbiotically.
A Debated Finale
Together’s ending, which is best experienced firsthand, has created disagreement on the story's concluding statement about enmeshed dynamics. It has been said that those not in relationships have seen the movie as a compelling reason for remaining unattached. On the other hand, a few pairs experiencing tension found that the film ended up guiding them to reconcile.
Whether you’re single or coupled up, your own reaction could act as a telling indicator of how you think about commitment. Will the finale inspire anxiety and horror, or a positive outlook on love? Will you see yourself in Tim or Millie and scream at your TV, or simply turn to your partner and say, “I understand that choice”?
Regardless of the outcome, Together is an experiment you can experience right now.
Together is currently playing on Hulu's platform as of this moment.
