Here's a challenge for long-term couples who enjoy scary movies: Sit down with your loved one and stream Together. This independent film success of 2025 has now made its launch on a streaming platform on Hulu. On the surface, it might appear like conventional body horror, but inside Together exists a profound contemplation about our choices in loving our partners.
A Debut Feature Exploring Relationship Dynamics
Together is the debut feature-length film 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, Franco and Brie bring a particular energy to their portrayals, skillfully embodying both the good and bad of a long-term relationship.
The story commences when Tim and Millie move from the big city to the rural area for her career. A commonly used plot device, sure, but that’s mostly where the tropes end. Together becomes as much a examination of mental states of the partnership as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
A Paranormal Spark
While hiking near their rural residence, a tempest descends, and the protagonists fall into an underground cave. After spending the night there and finally finding a way out, a strange force takes hold of the pair. This force creates a paranormal intimacy between them that goes far beyond emotional intimacy.
The entire film is a methodically building fright fest, interspersing moments of dreamlike terrors, unsettling (but never too gross) biological grotesqueries, and surprisingly comedic interactions (sometimes during something horrific). Shanks orchestrates these parts neatly and delivers them in a slowly mounting sense of impending doom.
Nuanced Portrayals
A significant portion of Together is solely Brie and Franco, and they masterfully render manifold depths to the partnership at the film's core. Millie’s confidence and feeling of intimacy is waning due to a distance. Her underlying frustration of Tim for his unwillingness to chase only his floundering music career inexorably rises.
Tim, on the other hand feels trapped and separated by Millie, who’s the cause they’ve left the city and far away from his network of friends. He is terrified of the notion of completely losing his sense of self in his partner. This fear is amplified by the reality he can’t drive and relies on Millie for mobility.
Shanks’ smartest move in Together refrains from painting Tim or Millie the clear bad guy.
Tim and Millie confront the type of challenges that are inherent in long-term unions a decade in. Deep down, they have affection for each other. They share moments of joy, comfort one another, and are vulnerable at times. But under the surface, there’s an inescapable current of uncertainty about their bond.
Thematic Depth
While the supernatural forces in Together act as a metaphor for these fears of unhealthy attachment and giving oneself over to a partner, the allegory never feels clumsy or pretentious. Instead, these ickier, creepier moments present a ideal counterpart to the relationship narrative. Both the horror and the drama serve the other symbiotically.
A Controversial Conclusion
Together’s final act, which remains unspoiled, has sparked debate on the movie's final takeaway about enmeshed dynamics. Accounts suggest that those not in relationships have seen the movie as a powerful case for remaining unattached. On the other hand, some couples who were in conflict found that the film actually helped them make up.
Regardless of your relationship status, your own reaction could act as a great barometer of how you perceive partnership. Will the finale inspire feelings of uneasiness and dread, or a positive outlook on love? Will you see yourself in either protagonist and scream at your TV, or simply glance toward your other half and utter, “I understand that choice”?
Regardless of the outcome, Together is an test you can undertake today.
Together is streaming on Hulu as of this moment.
