SXSW 2025: TOGETHER is a romantic nightmare
There comes a point in every romantic relationship where you have to decide if your future includes your partner. Are you still together because of all the years you have in the rearview mirror or because of a desire to see what the future holds for you as a couple? After premiering to rave reviews at Sundance, Together brings its weird sensibilities to the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. It’s the feature directorial debut for Michael Shanks, and stars real-life husband/wife duo Alison Brie and Dave Franco as a couple who find themselves at this precipice – with a supernatural force or two pushing them to the brink.
Millie (Brie) and Tim (Franco) have been together for well over a decade. There’s love between them, but also a growing, unchecked resentment. They’ve spent their entire relationship living in a big city, but now Millie has accepted a teaching job that will take them to the middle of nowhere in an upstate forest. The city is only a few hours away, but Tim feels like he’s lost everything. They only have one car, but Tim can’t drive. There’s a train to the city, but Tim needs Millie to drop him off at the station. In an attempt to reconnect with one another and with nature, they go on a hike. A torrential downpour appears out of nowhere, and the couple takes shelter in a strange cave with an eerie pool that seems to have supernatural properties. After drinking from the pool, the couple starts to notice that they’re magnetically drawn to each other.
Together is uniquely horrifying in that it will strike fear into the hearts of those in relationships and those not. It plays with the idea of codependency and losing yourself so deeply in a relationship that you forget about yourself. It doesn’t even have to be a romantic relationship. There are plenty of friendships that cause you to lose any understanding of life on your own. This creates a vicious cycle – things go badly, then a glimmer of good times convinces you that somehow the future will get you back to that happy place. As Together posits, when is complacency actually harmony? Aren’t we all searching for our better half? Plato hypothesized that humans originally existed as a being with two heads, four arms, and four legs, but the gods feared them to be too powerful in this form, so they were split in two. Since then, we’ve been doomed to wander the earth in search of what was taken from us.
Brie and Franco are a compelling duo, and their comfort with one another elevates Together to a special type of horror where the interpersonal dynamics are just as compelling as the scares. The film’s only detraction is the opening scene. Before Millie and Tim moved into the area, another couple went missing. A search party is currently looking for them. Some dogs wander into the same cave that Tim and Millie later find and drink the water. Together immediately reveals what happens when a living entity drinks from that well, so as soon as Tim and Millie do it, the audience knows what’s coming. There are plenty of twists, turns, extremely effective jumpscares, and moments of comedic levity, but the audience also knows the fate that awaits the couple. The opening scene doesn’t entirely take the wind out of Together’s sails, but it does make the film coast in a limbo of sorts.
The hardest part about being in a relationship is knowing when it’s over. Knowing when it’s time to throw in the towel, no matter how many years you’ve racked up together. The evil you know is better than the one you don’t. It’s what keeps people in this endless push-and-pull with their partner. They grow addicted to the disappointment, the attention, and the complacency. Together is a horror movie for the romantic in all of us. A stellar showcase of Brie and Franco, Together proves that love can be enough…sometimes.
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