Together (2025) | Flesh Magnets

The trailers for Together lean pretty hard in one direction without showing you much. Not a whole lot is disclosed about the film’s story or the cause of what is happening to the two main characters. However, enough is shown for you to immediately understand what genre of horror this movie fits under: body horror. It’s a sub-genre that some horror fans avoid altogether due to how overly graphic it often is. I’m not necessarily the biggest fan, but I am willing to take a dip in the proverbial pool every so often when the mood is right. After I mentally prepared myself for some graphic violence and shocking imagery, I finally watched Together only to find myself saying, “It wasn’t as grotesque as I was expecting.”

Pros

Solid acting from the small cast
Convincing practical effects
Some good dialogue in particular scenes
Doesn’t overstay its welcome or over-explain things
Creepy and disturbing moments

Cons

Conveniences and contrivances around how things work with the characters
Moves slowly for its simple plot
Why one person is affected more than another isn’t explained
A moment involving a wound in the third act doesn’t really make sense for a certain character’s motivations

Plot & Thoughts

Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) are a 30-something couple who have been together for a long time and are at a pivotal moment in their relationship. Millie has gotten a new job opportunity as an elementary school teacher in a small rural town, which means she’s moving out of the city and leaving her social circle behind. Tim is more of a city person and is anxious about leaving his friends to start a new life without any real opportunities waiting for him, all for the sake of being with Millie. While the two of them both say they want to stay together, there’s a strain between them as though complacency with each other is eating away at their relationship. It doesn’t help that a traumatic event has been haunting Tim for some time and has further added to the distance he seems to want in the relationship.

Despite all the signs that maybe they might want to split and go their own way, the two move out to the town together to a large house that a single elementary school teacher’s salary could not likely afford. While out hiking and exploring the area, the two find shelter in a mysterious cave during a sudden rainstorm. Even though it should be common knowledge that you should never drink sitting water—rather than holding out their water bottles to collect the rainwater—the two are too thirsty to wait out the storm and drink from the strange pool at the back of the cave. The next day, Tim starts to feel weird, distracted, and strangely drawn to Millie. Millie seems unaffected at first, but soon the two have trouble staying apart and find themselves being brought together through mysterious forces to the point of physically merging with one another.

At an hour and 42 minutes, Together skirts the line of being too long without overstaying its welcome, simply because the plot is not the most complex, and it ends right when things would get more complicated. It’s mostly a character drama between two people who are in an emotional rut in their relationship. Dave Franco and Alison Brie happen to be married in real life, and their chemistry works to convey a relationship in which two people really care about each other but are frustrated or unable to fully express their issues to their partner, and that lack of communication is causing a schism—hopefully, it’s not actually the case for them. Both do a great job in their roles to make the relationship drama compelling enough to keep your attention. There are several scenes, like the dinner scene in particular, in which both characters exchange well-written dialogue that effectively evokes a sense of resentment through the words while positively delivering everything. It’s a very convincing performance, and you believe these are two people who have been together a long time without being able to communicate everything comfortably. However, the plot is mostly centered on their relationship; the horror aspect is somewhat secondary to the experience and only occasionally occurs to shake things up.

When the horror does happen, it can be pretty creepy and interesting. The opening scene involving a search party sets the tone and what to expect in terms of some creepy, practical effects. The nightmares and visions that Tim has in the first act are shot well to make the moments feel dark and disturbing. The second act, however, slows down and focuses on how Tim is feeling different after drinking the magic water. Why he is the only one affected for a while and not Millie is never explained, but I guess it’s because he’s not as emotionally and psychologically stable as she, due to the recent changes in their life. During this phase of the film, the pacing feels a little slow, despite the occasional jump scare or strange happening to inject some drama into the story. By the time the two realize that something is seriously wrong, Together starts to pick up the pace again, and we start to get into the long-anticipated body horror scenes.

One particular scene in Together involving a reciprocating saw was teased in the trailers, and the tool was shown early in the film to foreshadow the use of Chekov’s carpentry equipment. However, when I finally saw the scene for myself, I was surprised that the film cut away before things got as intense as the more recent Evil Dead movies. Maybe there’s a different unrated version of the movie that is more graphic, but Together was not nearly as visceral as I was expecting it to be. There are still some shocking scenes involving merged flesh, some of which use practical and makeup effects that look cool and grotesque, but nothing as wild as what I anticipated. There is one violent moment towards the end in which a character is badly cut, which I take issue with only because it’s an act of a character who is assuming that things will just work out the way they want, but I will keep it vague to avoid spoilers.

TL;DR

Together may not have been the bloody, gory mess I expected, but I was not disappointed. It has a simple plot and a pace that moves a little too slowly at times. However, the actors and dialogue do a lot to keep you engaged with what is going on, and the occasional weird moment of horror helps ratchet up the tension to build interest for the climax. With a relatively short runtime, it’s worth a watch.

Dagon Dogs Posts