TOGETHER Delivers Body Horror for the Hopelessly Romantic [Fantasia 2025 Review]

Love is a many-splendored thing, especially in long-term relationships. As days become months, months become years, and years become decades, lines that define individual interests, feelings, finances, freedom, and goals can easily become blurred and difficult to distinguish. A situation all too relatable for many, TOGETHER takes this very idea and pushes it to the point of no return. Hot off its Canadian Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival and nationwide theatrical U.S. release, TOGETHER offers bold body horror and a love story guaranteed to get under your skin.

The debut feature film from Aussie writer/director Michael Shanks, TOGETHER wastes no time laying all of its cards on the table. In a cold open, a search party is combing the woods for a missing couple when two search dogs sniff their way into a mysterious cave and help themselves to some very ominous-looking water. Later that night, these two unfortunate pups suffer a fate only the dogs from John Carpenter’s THE THING could ever understand.

Next, the story shifts over to Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco). After nearly a decade together and some fresh family trauma for Tim, a cush job offer for Millie provides the perfect excuse for the pair to move out of the city and start fresh. Hoping to make the most of this big life moment, Millie proposes to Tim in front of all their friends at their going-away party. One very awkward moment later, the couple remains together, but the moment feels heavy with tension and uncertainty. 

Meeting Tim and Millie in this particular moment conveys more about their relationship than any amount of exposition ever could. Tim is an aimless, grieving dreamer, while Millie is more practical and seeks to move forward, but finds her happiness and hope wearing thin. Although their love is palpable, both realize that love may not be enough to save them. This fact becomes even clearer after the move to upstate New York, where the couple finds themselves at the bottom of a cave, infected with an unknown, mysterious, and supernatural ailment that seeks to unify the two in body, mind, and soul. And did I mention, body?

While horror has always been a prime vessel to explore enigmatic and complex ideas through the use of metaphors and allegories, let’s be real. It’s a creative choice that has become a bit overused and heavy-handed over the last decade or so. Therefore, it is refreshing when a film like TOGETHER comes along that makes no bones about its narrative intent, and becomes all the stronger for it. Yes, the film is about co-dependency on some level, but it’s also about the beauty in fully dedicating and committing to a person completely. It’s also about a weird, Plato-inspired cult, but honestly, that element of the film feels more like a fun (if not convenient) secondary subplot than central to the main plot.

Utilizing both practical and digital effects, the body horror elements of the film are supremely effective, unsettling, and well, gross. Less goopy than, say, a Cronenberg outing, there’s a visceral distress involved with Tim and Millie’s battle with the force seeking to mush them together. Coupled with an absolute banger of a score by Cornel Wilczek and the film’s supremely present and unnerving sound design, the terror, pain, and confusion inflicted by the mysterious cave force are beautifully telegraphed. 

Further supporting these effects are the performances from Brie and Franco. As a couple in real life, the genuine connection and chemistry between the two easily translates to their performances, allowing the literal and figurative intimacy between Tim and Millie to reach a whole new level. Even when confronted with unfathomable choices and confounding partner behavior, there’s an authenticity and tenderness to their interactions that fuel every subsequent choice Tim and Millie make. This element of comfort also allows for a surprising amount of humor to sneak into the film in a way that never feels forced or false.  

Where TOGETHER may lose favor with some folks is in the third act of the film. In some ways, the narrative follows a predictable, if not perfectly enjoyable, trajectory. In others, it swings for the fences, confronting viewers to reckon with its choices and the implied consequences. Doubling down on this fact are the film’s final moments, which feel unabashedly audacious and self-aware, never trying to be something it’s not. In a landscape of cautious films, TOGETHER delivers monstrously entertaining body horror for the hopelessly romantic at heart.

The 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 16 to August 3 in Montreal, Quebec, primarily at the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screenings and events at Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée. For more information, please visit the Fantasia website here.