Here's a challenge for those in enduring partnerships who appreciate the horror genre: Settle in with your partner and stream Together. The independent film success of 2025 recently had its streaming debut on Hulu. Outwardly, it could look like conventional body horror, but within Together resides a intense meditation about the ways we decide to love our partners.
A Debut Feature Exploring Relationship Dynamics
Together represents the debut feature-length film for director Michael Shanks. It features actors Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Millie and Tim, a pair who are not married that have remained a couple for a decade. United in marriage in real life in 2017, the actors bring a particular energy to their roles, masterfully depicting both the good and bad of a committed partnership.
The plot begins when Millie and Tim relocate from the urban environment to the countryside for professional reasons. A familiar plot device, of course, but that’s primarily where the tropes cease. Together becomes as much a psychological exploration of the pair’s relationship as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
A Paranormal Spark
While walking near their country house, a storm hits, and Millie and Tim discover an hole in the earth. After being trapped overnight there and managing to escape, a mysterious influence starts to affect the duo. This force compels a paranormal intimacy between them that goes far beyond emotional intimacy.
The whole movie is a slow burn of scares, blending moments of dreamlike terrors, disturbing (but tastefully done) body horror, and authentically humorous dialogue (sometimes during something horrific). Michael Shanks skillfully blends these components neatly and delivers them in a gradually swelling sense of impending doom.
Layered Performances
A significant portion of Together is only the two lead actors, and they skillfully illustrate manifold depths to the partnership at the film's core. Her self-assurance and feeling of intimacy is suffering due to a distance. Her subconscious resentment of Tim for his unwillingness to focus on anything other than his failing musical ambitions slowly bubbles to the surface.
Conversely, Tim senses confinement and separated by Millie, who’s the reason they’ve left the city and removed from his network of friends. He dreads the idea of totally forfeiting his sense of self in Millie. This fear is amplified by the fact he can’t drive and is dependent on Millie for getting around.
The director's cleverest decision is that he refrains from painting Tim or Millie the obvious villain.
Tim and Millie grapple with the type of challenges that arise in long-term unions after ten years. Deep down, they continue to care for each other. They find humor with each other, comfort one another, and are vulnerable at times. But beneath it all, there’s an inescapable current of uncertainty about their relationship.
Allegory and Meaning
While the otherworldly presence in Together represent these anxieties of excessive reliance and fully committing to another person, the allegory avoids being clumsy or self-important. Instead, these ickier, creepier moments present a ideal counterpart to the interpersonal storytelling. Both the frights and the fights serve the other in harmony.
A Divisive Ending
Together’s final act, which won’t be spoiled here, has sparked debate on the movie's final takeaway about codependent relationships. Accounts suggest that unattached audience members have understood the narrative as a compelling reason for avoiding commitment. Conversely, some couples who were in conflict found that the film ultimately assisted them reconcile.
Regardless of your relationship status, your own response could act as a revealing measure of how you view relationships. Will the finale inspire feelings of uneasiness and dread, or a heartwarming sense of hope? Will you recognize your own traits in one of the characters and yell at the screen, or simply glance toward your other half and state, “We could get through that together”?
No matter your reaction, Together is an test you can undertake today.
Together is available to watch on Hulu as of this moment.
