Tim (Dave Franco) is avoiding guests at his own going-away party hosted by himself and his long-term girlfriend, Millie (Alison Brie), who just accepted a job at a new school that will take them out of the city and to rural upstate New York.  As the night wears on, Millie makes the move and proposes to Tim, later framing it as a joke to help disarm Tim’s unenthusiastic reaction.  Trying to make things right after they move into their new home, the two take a romantic hike, but when a rainstorm pops up and the pair falls into an abandoned cave, they must shelter there for the night.  In the morning, they return home, but something is not quite right with Tim after their shared time in the wilderness failed to bring them closer as was initially intended. 

Michael Shanks writes and directs Together, a buzzy acquisition for Neon out of the Sundance Film Festival.  The 102-minute film blends horror and drama, but filtered through the narrative lens of a romance on the rocks.  Shanks strikes a perfect balance between some of modern horror’s fascinations, along with a unique spin on body horror that takes the core concept of the destruction and extrapolation of oneself to a new and inventive level that can be more palpable to a modern or unsuspecting audience. 

Unfortunately, the cold open shares a little bit too much, which is unfortunate as the callback to this opening once in the story proper could have better served as a major reveal instead of just shallowly deepening the narrative depth.  A town-wise search and rescue team are looking for two lost hikers, Simon and Keri, when two of the search dogs fall into the abandoned cave and lap up water from the strange pool at the far corner.  That night, awful sounds are heard from the kennel, and when the farmer (Sunny S. Walia) goes to investigate the noise, he finds his dogs – the two from the well – in the middle of a nightmarish fusion, foaming and howling from a combined mouth.  Cutting before this reveal would have greatly enhanced the interest and allure of the first act as there would still be something remaining of the core mystery for us to solve, but going into the film proper already knowing that this cave fuses those who share a drink from the pool means we are just waiting for Tim and Maddie to have their turn.  This also means that all of the backstory surrounding Tim’s mother (Nancy Finn) and father (Mark Robinson), well set up and executed as it is, is all just padding; though, thankfully, their unfortunate fate is not the seed of yet another trauma storyline. 

Shanks, to his credit, actually works this backstory into Maddie’s reaction to Tim’s odd behavior quite well in a way that helps flavor the narrative instead of defining it.  The dynamic between Tim and Maddie is one of the hallmarks of Together because of Shanks’ acuity in forming these two people who may have met the natural end of their long-term relationship, or at least the end of not being faced with any tectonic decisions.  Perhaps a bit too young for even an early onset midlife crisis, both are standing on the precipice of change, yet on opposite sides as to whether that change will be faced in unison or solo.  We are not privy to the minutia of their relationship, but Shanks is able to paint their history with broad enough strokes that both performers are able to build up interesting characters that we absolutely believe they are a couple on the rocks.  Some of this may be in part due to a shorthand which Franco and Brie share with each other given their real-life relationship off of the screen, but the romantic drama aspect of this script cannot be overstated enough. 

Shanks’ ambition, however, causes him to stretch this narrative to cover a few too many ideas, especially in the third act, that he never quite fully fleshes out in a satisfying manner given the gravity of the themes he is working with.  Until now, there had been hints at what caused the strange things that happened to those who drank from the pool; a cult.  More specifically, it is a cult that follows the ancient idea that humans were originally four-limbed creatures, but Zeus, fearing their power, split them into two, leaving the halves destined to live apart.  Soulmates.  This cult found a way to fuse two partners back into a single person, opening the film up to some wider concepts of identity, and in many of the discussions, the film is seemingly unaware that it is tiptoing into the realm of trans-identity or more general body dysmorphia in a way that it was ultimately unprepared or disinterested in discussing. Shanks’ ambitions, beyond a fractured relationship, are to revel in the shock value of limbs merging and twisting into one and the desperate pulling apart thanks to Chekov’s Sawzall. For that reason, it is not entirely fair to Together to ask why it does not present a more coherent thesis on this front, but Shanks is absolutely working with the same vocabulary at times, and the omission seems slightly irresponsible.

Those images of bodies fusing together are the main avenue for the film’s horror imagery.  Shanks’ approach to body horror here feels very specific and fresh because it stems out as a byproduct of the relationship drama.  It is not a transformation into something monstrous, but rather the personification of a union.  This visual metaphor would be enhanced had Tim and Millie been on a slightly steeper arc that allowed for more growth between them, but the intention is clear enough that the film ultimately still works on the thematic level that it set out upon.  Tonally, however, Shanks, even in his more gruesome moments, opts to keep things light and airy, bordering on camp but only with one such drug-fueled sequence where filmmaker and cast are working in unison of tone.  This mismatch makes Together a confusing sit as audiences can be forgiven for not knowing what the intention of the individual scenes actually is at any given moment given their wild oscillation from one to the next, and even between characters sharing the same scene. 

For a feature debut, and for an entry into the bloated field of modern horror, Shanks, still, has put forth a strong effort that showcases many of his strengths as both a storyteller and filmmaker.  Bolstered by strong performances, the film is easy to watch and well assembled in the edit by Sean Lahiff, with a sequence of Tim in the shower being a real highlight of the film.  Each idea that Shanks knowingly sought to contend with is well thought out and approached through a unique lens, but the unfortunate result is that these ideas do not always blend well together so the film feels bloated and disjointed across its reach, needing a metaphoric lap or two from the sunken pool central to the lore of its own story.  With that said, Shanks has proven himself capable of presenting a new way of looking at these worn-out horror tropes and packaging them in a way that can connect to a modern audience with their current fears and anxieties about the present and the future.  He has a singular voice, but for his next outing, he just needs to focus on a singular theme so that when he shines his light on the shadowy fringes of conventional happiness, he can more clearly expose what we prefer to keep hidden away.