A celebrity couple made a horror movie about something truly scary: Relationships
“Together” — 3.5 stars
Horror movies have exploited any number of human fears over the decades: homicidal maniacs, homicidal clowns, sharks, the dark, nuclear Armageddon and all manner of the undead, from Frankenstein’s monster to your friendly neighborhood zombie. But credit the millennials with finally tapping into one of the most primal terrors of all.
Commitment.
“Together,” the feature debut of writer-director Michael Shanks, plays with the push-pull of romantic attachment like a cat toying with a hapless mouse, and in this Shanks is assisted by Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple whose prickly, passive-aggressive relationship takes on increasing shades of body horror. That the two stars are married in real life is part of the movie’s genius, and certainly key to why “Together” is as outrageously funny as it is scary.
Those moviegoers who are established couples and who’ve wrestled with the doubts that come with merging lives — loss of freedom, loss of identity, loss of the spark — may find this a comedy in which their fears are made flesh, and icky flesh at that. That also makes “Together” the worst third-date movie ever.
When the story begins, Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) are leaving the city for a new life in a small town, where she has a teaching job and he — well, Tim is 35 and thinks he might still become a rock star. The two have been together for years, to the point that familiarity is curdling into boredom and sex has become another item on the to-do list. When Alison puckishly pops the question to Tim at a friend-filled going-away party, the yawning silence that ensues says everything about a relationship that’s treading water.
Maybe moving into a big old house in the country will fix things. Maybe it will make them worse. Maybe both. While Millie starts her new job — and is quickly befriended by Jamie (Damon Herriman), a flirty fellow teacher — Tim is stuck at home digging semi-dead rodents out of the ceiling and practicing guitar for a gig with friends back in the city. They’re living parallel lives that are diverging in confusion, irritation and more than a little sadness. What would it take to draw these two together again?
A good horror story literalizes emotional realities into physical being, embodying them in ways we can’t stop watching, even if it’s through our fingers. So when Tim and Millie take a hike in some nearby woods and, after various comic misadventures, drink from a pool that may as well have a sign that says “DO NOT DRINK FROM THIS POOL,” the audience waits for the other shoe to drop. It’s two shoes, actually, and it’s not long before they’re paired up.
To say more would be to spoil the fun, but I can tell you that “Together” explores anxieties about surrendering one’s individuality to the unit of coupledom in ways that give new meaning to the phrase “stuck on you” — and that has had audiences in preview screenings screaming in disgusted delight.
Franco and Brie rise to the challenge of the movie’s sometimes astonishing physical demands, working together with the suppleness and invisible harmony of two people who know each other intimately. You know they know how it feels for a relationship to go stale, and also how deeply the bonds of trust and devotion can run.
Undervalued players both — Franco has labored under the shadow of his brother James, while Brie has amassed a stellar list of TV credits (“Community,” “Mad Men,” “GLOW”) without breaking through to major stardom — they enter into the gross-out giddiness of Shanks’ vision with the ease of partners who are comfortable in each others’ skin.
“Together” loses some of its magic in the final scenes, pulling an unconvincing monster out of its hat and positing an unnecessary cult conspiracy in an effort to “explain” what’s happening to poor Millie and Tim.
None of that is necessary, although I’m sorry to see a random shot in the version of the movie that played at Sundance last January go missing from the release print, of two dogs stiffly staring each other down like those toy magnetic Scotties. (The moment is still in the trailer.) In this movie, metaphor is meaning and message enough: What love has joined together, let nothing put asunder. Except maybe a power saw.
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In theaters now. Rated R for violent/disturbing content, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and brief drug content. 102 minutes.