TAORMINA FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW! Together is a new body horror feature film directed by Michael Shanks and starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple whose neuroses around settling down bring them into conflict with a bizarre supernatural force.
We meet Millie (Brie) and Tim (Franco) at a party, in a scene with the cinematic wits of a dog killing. In front of a large crowd, Millie gets down on one knee and proposes to her long-time, waster boyfriend Tim with the excruciating mime of opening a non-existent ring box. Something he responds to with a shameful, lengthy stupor before saying yes. The whole sequence is ugly. Immediately, it’s questionable why you would want to know these two, except perhaps to watch them suffer, which is, of course, completely fine in a horror movie.
And suffer they do. After an opening montage suggesting something awful and CGI is in the woods, the couple moves to a house in said woods, where a kind of infection takes place after they fall into an eerie cave while hiking. They wake up to find their bodies seem to want to merge, something that intensifies when they sleep, leading to some scary and quite wince-inducing sequences.
The rest of the film is about them gluing together and trying to work out how not to. There’s a mystery about a couple of hikers who disappeared in the woods, but plot-wise, they are not much more than a narrative convenience.
“…they wake up to find their bodies seem to want to merge…”
The whole thing is presented well, with some intriguing design choices, like a bizarre sunken chapel, and bell-lined forest trails, and the cinematography by Germain McMicking makes nice use of the woodland elements. The soundtrack by Cornel Wilczek is tight and effective.
I didn’t realize Brie and Franco are a couple, and that surprised me. There was a persistent clank of inauthenticity from Brie, who seemed to be in a comedy. Franco has plenty of poise, though, and gives a great, knotty performance.
There is, however, a major problem here; After I watched it, I discovered papers were served in mid-May against Shanks, Franco, Brie, their agents WME, and Neon Entertainment, among others, for copyright infringement.
So, do I review it as an original piece or take the side of the plaintiffs? It begs the question of how wise it was of Neon to go ahead with the release. The film is now scheduled to open on July 31st, 2025.
So, with apologies to the below-the-line talent that helped make this, it’s hard for me to find much more than a guarded resentment on the question of whether this is any good or not. The problem is bigger than that and above my pay grade. Don’t the producers and Neon see the issue here? Is anyone at their desks anymore?
It is a mark of the quality of the film whether it is original, inspired, or ethical, and I cannot determine that until the jury trial being requested in the suit has delivered a verdict.
At first blush, this looks like a half-decent horror movie, but the whole situation absolutely reeks (the suit is widely available online to those interested). My review score reflects my gratitude to Neon et al for dragging me into the periphery of a legal dispute.
Anyway. I kind of enjoyed it while I watched it. Your mileage may vary.
Together screened at the 2025 Taormina International Film Festival.
"…The whole situation absolutely reeks."
