Consider this a challenge for long-term couples who are fans of scary movies: Get comfortable with your significant other and watch Together. This 2025 indie hit just made its online premiere on the Hulu service. On the surface, it may seem like conventional biological terror, but within Together resides a deep examination about the ways we decide to love our partners.
A Directorial Debut Investigating Relationship Dynamics
Together marks the first full-length movie for filmmaker Michael Shanks. It showcases Dave Franco and Alison Brie as Tim and Millie, a pair who are not married that have remained a couple for over ten years. United in marriage in actuality in 2017, Franco and Brie infuse a particular energy to their portrayals, skillfully embodying both the strengths and weaknesses of a long-term relationship.
The narrative starts when Millie and Tim relocate from the urban environment to the countryside for professional reasons. A somewhat stereotypical narrative setup, sure, but that’s primarily where the tropes end. Together transforms into as much a examination of mental states of the pair’s relationship as it is a movie featuring biological frights.
A Paranormal Spark
While walking near their new home, a tempest descends, and Millie and Tim tumble into an underground cave. After a night spent there and managing to escape, a mysterious influence begins influencing the pair. This force creates a otherworldly bond between them that goes exceeding typical partnership.
The whole movie is a gradually intensifying horror experience, blending bits of hallucinatory nightmares, unsettling (but never too gross) biological grotesqueries, and authentically humorous exchanges (sometimes in the middle of something disturbing). Shanks skillfully blends these components expertly and presents them in a gradually swelling aura of dread.
Nuanced Portrayals
A large part of Together is exclusively Brie and Franco, and they deftly portray numerous complexities to the dynamic between Tim and Millie. Millie’s confidence and emotional bond is waning due to a emotional and physical gap. Her underlying frustration of Tim for his hesitance to focus on anything other than his floundering music career gradually emerges.
Tim, on the other hand senses confinement and separated by Millie, who’s the cause they’ve moved to the country and far away from his social circle. He is terrified of the idea of utterly sacrificing his sense of self in Millie. This fear is further exacerbated by the reality he does not operate a vehicle and is dependent on Millie for getting around.
The director's cleverest decision in this movie never makes one partner or the other the clear bad guy.
Tim and Millie confront the kind of problems that arise in most partnerships a decade in. Fundamentally, they continue to care for each other. They still laugh together, offer support, and share intimately at times. But beneath it all, there’s an persistent current of uncertainty about their relationship.
Thematic Depth
While the otherworldly presence in Together represent these concerns of unhealthy attachment and totally devoting oneself to another person, the allegory avoids being overly obvious or self-important. Instead, these ickier, creepier moments provide a ideal counterpart to the character-driven drama. Both the supernatural and the personal serve the other in a mutually beneficial way.
A Debated Finale
Together’s conclusion, which is best experienced firsthand, has left audiences divided on the story's concluding statement about codependent relationships. It has been said that those not in relationships have seen the movie as a strong argument for staying single. Meanwhile, some couples experiencing tension found that the film ultimately assisted them reconcile.
If you are alone or with a partner, your own reaction could function as a revealing measure of how you view relationships. Will the finale plant feelings of uneasiness and dread, or a positive outlook on love? Will you see yourself in one of the characters and scream at your TV, or simply look at your significant other and say, “I understand that choice”?
Regardless of the outcome, Together is an experiment you can experience right now.
Together is streaming on Hulu at present.
