‘Together’ Fumbles an Interesting Premise with Bland Execution

At a Glance: A trailer’s worth of well-crafted horror beats jammed into a bloated feature, Together fumbles its intriguing concept by failing to tell a compelling story and relying too heavily on stars with a shocking lack of chemistry.

With a killer marketing campaign, an exciting hook, and a real-life power couple playing the leads, Together had all the ingredients to be among the best horror films of the year. Instead, it was a powerful reminder that actual chemistry doesn’t always lead to on-screen chemistry.

So let’s dive into the obvious Achilles heel of this cautionary tale about the dangers of codependency – Alison Brie and Dave Franco. Or rather, their characters – Millie and Tim. The film follows this young couple as they make a big move from NYC to the suburbs of upstate New York. Millie, a young teacher, is the impetus of the move, as she’s just landed a great new job at a small town school. Tim is less enthusiastic, preferring the urban lifestyle of an unemployed musician.

Almost immediately, the film let’s us know that this move is a major point of contention between Tim and Millie. In fact, there’s so much resistance to the move that Tim declines a marriage proposal from Millie at their going-away party, in front of all of their friends. That’s about as much warmth as we see from the couple the entire film, as they continue to pull further and further away from each other as the movie carries on.

Unfortunately, they are forced to physically become closer together after a mysterious force creates a literal magnetism between their bodies, threatening to morph the two of them into a single being via grotesque body-horror shenanigans.

Herein lies the problem. As a metaphor for codependency, the film simply falls apart. Not only are the couple not particularly codependent, they seem to be actively trying to put as much emotional distance between the two of them as possible. The metaphor might have worked better with two people who are obsessed with each other, as then it could explore the dangers of losing one’s identity to their relationship.

That’s not the direction Together takes, and the film does such a good job of portraying their cold, loveless relationship that it thoroughly kills one’s investment of the fate of these characters. This is a real shame, because off the big screen Brie and Franco seem to have a charming interpersonal relationship. It would have been nice to see that in the film, rather than the dreary melodrama we got instead.

It’s not the either actor is necessarily bad, it’s that their characters are written in a way that doesn’t showcase the value of their relationship. If we don’t care about the relationship from the beginning, then why should we feel anything when that relationship is threatened? I certainly didn’t and, as a particularly sappy soon-to-be-husband, it doesn’t take much get me on board with a cute couple.

On top of the major issues undermining the entire premise of the film, it’s littered with inane little writing issues that snowball into a total destruction of suspension of disbelief. Even the setup feels like a plothole in a way, as how can a starving artist and public school teacher afford a two-story home in upstate New York? Are the writers so unaware of reality that this didn’t seem ridiculous to them, or did they simply not care?

On top of that, the mechanism that kicks off the magnetic transformation requires so many levels of stupidity that you begin to lose sympathy for the victims. The couple decide to go hiking in a rainstorm (dumb) and fall into a mysterious pit, where Tim almost immediately starts drinking black, goopy puddle water (dumber) without a moment’s hesitation. Anybody who has spent any time in the wilderness would be screaming at the screen at this point.

In these and many ways, the movie is an assault on your mind. There are too many unbelievable coincidences, the relationship is too bad for the film to gaslight you into believing it’s worth saving. The actual supernatural elements are vague and, ultimately, not important enough to give a satisfying backstory. What’s left is a few admittedly intense and visually impressive body horror sequences, but those are fleeting moments in a script that was probably better off staying at the bottom of that hole.