“A relationship is like a shark,” so goes a simile popularized by “Annie Hall.” The reason? “It has to constantly move forward, or it dies.” In writer/director Michael Shanks’ debut feature “Together,” a different fate for the predatory fish that is a couple in crisis. It can eat itself.
By Shanks’ estimation, horror is the inversion of romance. For example, a line like “you complete me” can be just as easily deployed as a scare tactic instead of wooing words of affirmation. “Together” renders cinematically a terror common in everyday life: a couple that needs to break up but cannot separate themselves from each other. There’s some unexplainable, mysterious power that keeps drawing them back together. Shanks is just smart enough to see the potential for a genre flick in that ghastly gravitational pull.
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He’s aided in this mission through the casting of real-life married couple (and frequent on-screen partners) Dave Franco and Allison Brie. “Together” finds their characters, his plateauing musician Tim and her upstart teacher Millie, at a clear hinge point in their relationship. Splitting or hitching are equally likely outcomes when the film picks up on their story at their going-away party. Like many relationships on the rocks, the participants think a change in anything but themselves could be the key to their eternal happiness.
However, their move from urban bustle to countryside isolation only results in their inability to hide from each other and the problems they bring with them. Franco and Brie effortlessly conjure the entropy of a relationship held together by apathetic acculturation to one another. The duo weaponizes their ease around each other, hollowing out their physical intimacy and other unspoken languages into inhibitive dynamics that prevent them from really connecting.
It takes some time for the engine to rev up in “Together” as Shanks’ script begins to set the stage for what’s to come. Early scenes focus on boilerplate exposition that seems like breadcrumbs leading to a big revelation. Mercifully, Shanks avoids falling into the common trap of highfalutin “metaphorror” that treats a movie like a puzzle a viewer must solve. All those details fall away as a more primal fear sets in—that of an unbreakable connection.
Instead of crafting a game, “Together” takes its audience for a ride meant to disquiet and unsettle. Shanks takes a simple, sinking sensation of a couple who can’t get their bodies to do what their minds tell them and conjures it as something like a demonic possession. He realizes this energy dramatically and emphatically with countless mortifications and transmogrifications of Tim and Millie’s physical form. But that familiarity is precisely what makes the film so gripping and unexpected to watch. A couple’s shock from complacency into commitment is an act of pure cinematic imagination.
As Tim and Millie begin to experience the throes of their unshakable physical attraction—literally—“Together” offers some hints at the cause of their ailment. There are some mythological elements thrown out, as well as some scientific explanations thrown out. But the film’s thrills come from simply dwelling in the miasma of a couple realizing what it means to make ties that bind. Whatever alien or monstrous force grips them ultimately fades in importance to the sheer terror of two people struggling to control their movements around each other.
“Together” is a team effort of a two-hander between its two stars, and Allison Brie contributes to grounding the film with both humor and drama. But it’s Dave Franco who puts in the work to make the genre elements of the story land with his committed performance. Literal blood, sweat, and tears pour out from the actor to sell the reality of his sweaty, smarmy dirtbag of a boyfriend. Franco earns Scream King status as he sells the horror and humanity of the film in equal measure.
Shanks’ narrative does not betray all that his leads pour into its success. “Together” gets as gloriously, deliciously unhinged as Brie and Franco do in its unforgettable final minutes that fuse the various tonal strands. Shanks is open to a genuinely subversive resolution as two become one in his exploration of codependency. It’s the rare film that can hit a nerve as well as an artery. [B+]
