Thematic flexibility is a great thing for a film to have. Together has it. You think for the entire film that a man and a woman physically joining at a biological level would be symbolic of the commitment jitters of the newly engaged. If that were the only thing Together were doing, it might be a rather shallow enterprise, especially as it’s the man’s jitters that would be most closely approximated in the story of Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Brie’s husband, Dave Franco, the Franco who isn’t cancelled).

Thanks goodness Michael Shanks’ film has an additional secret weapon whose profundity you only piece together near the end. The rest of the time, you just appreciate what a fine example of prestige horror Together is from moment to moment.

If you think it’s rather miraculous that no one has ever come up with this idea before, well, someone has, and the film is actually in some legal hot water over it. But while the he saids and she saids are playing out, we can just appreciate an exciting genre film with the sort of hidden thematic heft we can only hint at within the confines of a review.

Millie and Tim have been together for the better part of a decade, as she pursues a teaching career, and he pursues a career as a rock musician that can’t be accurately described as such. He’s comfortable in their relationship and social context – perhaps too comfortable, as he seems to have lost his instincts toward intimacy after their long partnership that’s suspiciously lacking the formality of an engagement. Shaking up their rut, and forcing their relationship in one direction or another, is the new teaching job Millie gets in a rural area, which will require them to move hours from the city. It’s almost forced that other direction, as Tim is caught on the back foot by a marriage proposal she makes in front of all their friends at their going away party.

They get past the faux pas of his stammering into a belated acceptance of the proposal. But the wounds are healing a bit slowly after they relocate, and Tim is certainly feeling shackled, metaphorically speaking, to Millie. They can drop the metaphor when the pair stumbles into a hole in the ground on a rainy night lost in the woods, which seems to have been some sort of sacred space for who knows whom. When they wake up the next morning, their legs are lightly sewn together through a thin, and at this point separable, membrane. It won’t stay thin and separable for long.

Horror is often a metaphor for something, dating back to George Romero’s zombie movies. Together is actually a metaphor for a couple things, but the only one we really want to discuss is the obvious one that rears its head through the movie’s squirmy body horror. But first, that body horror.

The gross co-mingling of flesh, much of it done practically, is hardly the only way Aussie director Shanks excels at the horror genre. In one particularly memorable scene, a face,  obscured from our view by a mottled glass door, drags itself up and down the length of the door, chilling us to the bone. Then there are the slightly more standard series of nightmarish images, all just a bit more memorable than their more middling counterparts from other films.

If Franco and Brie come off here as a real couple, it’s because they are, and Together is all the better for it. It’s not that they couldn’t have given these performances with other actors, but that their evident comfort with one another easily makes us believe they would have once been in love, and now are primarily just accustomed to each other. The development that their bodies have essentially a magnetic, yet unwitting, pull to one another, has both a physical and emotional component, each of which require different sorts of performative gymnastics. As various appendages merge, we understand how this is more than a physical problem. Their physical reality reflects the emotional reality that it’s never easy to end a partnership that isn’t achieving its goals, especially when you’ve been doing it so long that the alternative is far more frightening.

Together boasts a third important performance in the form of Damon Herriman, who sort of comes between them – so to speak. But in keeping with the theme of smart decisions, Herriman’s character, a supervising teacher at Millie’s new school, has plenty of surprises in store as well. When it appears he has intentions toward Millie, Tim’s jealousy awakens, one of those “don’t know what you got until it might be gone” moments. Like, for example, a part of your own body about which you never gave much thought until it wasn’t there anymore.

Together is humming along with good technique, good performances, some pretty nice chills, and a theme that, while flirting with the obvious, is still appreciated. Then it transforms in a way that you won’t see coming, but makes perfect sense once you review what’s come before. The impact of this change is sudden and absolute, adding dimension right as the film should be wrapping up. Great movies travel home with you, and Together will certainly do that – perhaps especially if there’s someone waiting for you there at home. Your “better half,” as it were.

 

Together is currently playing in cinemas.