Together: Spouses Have to Stick Together in This Ace Body-Horror

By Chris Knight

Rating: A-

There’s a clever (and literal) needle drop of “2 Become 1” by the Spice Girls in Together, the feature writing-directing debut of Aussie filmmaker Michael Shanks. But it wasn’t the only choice he might have made.

When I got home from the screening, the radio was playing Bryan Ferry’s 1976 hit “Let’s Stick Together,” itself a cover of a song from 1962. Other possibilities — off the top of my head — include “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille, and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together.”

The point is, there’s a lot of music that captures the mood of this movie, a psychological/body horror about a young couple who move to the country and into a haunted house. Or maybe it’s the woods near the house that are haunted? Or perhaps just one of the couple?

Regardless, a short hike leads to a long underground entrapment, as they fall through a hole in the ground and land in damp cave that looks to have once been a place of worship. Down in the dark they encounter a sticky parasitic slime — or mould — that forces them to literally cling to one another, a condition that’s clearly going to get worse before it gets better.

Much has been made of the fact that the co-stars, Alison Brie and Dave Franco, are a real-life long-term couple, wedded now for eight years. It’s not for me to dissect the state of their marriage, but I’m going out on a limb and saying it’s probably healthier than that of Millie and Tim, the characters they play.

For one thing, those two aren’t even married. Millie proposes in an early scene — just one way in which the film subverts the tropes of man and woman — but they haven’t gotten around to tying the knot by the time they head out to a rural area where Millie has landed a teaching job.

Tim, who dreams of being a rock star and is on the cusp of realizing he never will be, feels more isolated than usual. He doesn’t know anyone. He can’t drive. Oh, and he and Millie aren’t having sex.

So, it’s almost a relief when things start to go batshit crazy. In typical horror movie fashion, it starts small — a weird dead animal lodged behind a ceiling light. Then Tim starts having nightmares (or are they?) and memories of a childhood trauma.

And pretty soon we move into the realm of That Which Shall Not Be Spoiled. Although I will say this. You know the horror movie cliché where someone gets dragged off screen at incredible speed by an unknown supernatural force? Turns out it’s just as scary when it happens slowly. Makers of frightening films, take note.

The result is an appealing two-hander, with an occasional third in Damon Herriman as a colleague of Millie’s whose attention to her makes Tim nervous. Director Shanks slathers on the weirdness like a mad confectioner, until you can’t tell where the cake ends and the icing begins.

He sprinkles in just enough phrases — you complete each other, my better half, etc. — to raise our hackles without us rolling our eyes. And there are two iterations of the line “If we don’t split now it’ll be much harder later.”

The conclusion is… interesting. I wouldn’t call it a happy ending, but it has a decidedly bittersweet tone, a mix of triumph, tragedy and an ongoing sense of dread. One to talk about afterwards with your significant other — if the subject matter hasn’t made you terrified of spending too much time alone with them.

Together. Directed by Michael Shanks. Starring Dave Franco, Alison Brie, and Damon Herriman. In theatres August 1.